I’m slowly emerging from my funk that I’ve been in and decided that I would sew something that looked relatively quick. After thumbing through the summer Victoria Secret catalog, I noticed a lot of asymmetrical knit tops and thought that I would give Kwik Sew 3694 (the short\cap\sleeveless version) a try since it had the same ‘vibe’ as the VS tops.
From the beginning, this pattern was a (small) PITA – while the pattern itself only has 2 pieces – they are two HUGE pieces to trace and cut… I had to trace on the floor since I didn’t have a large enough surface to work on. Finding a suitable fabric was a problem too – I didn’t want the hassle of trying to line up stripes and I found that a lot of prints wouldn’t work either. Fortunately I had enough of my Gorgeous Fabric’s Art print left over from my Burda Boatneck Top (and I thought it would make a neat retro style top). After sewing the inital pieces together, I thought I would try it on to see who it looked – that’s when I said to myself, “What in the hell was Kwik Sew thinking?”.
I know that I’m ‘vertically challenged’ and that this top is designed to be a tunic, but it’s looking a bit like a dress on me – and I know hemming won’t take up that much length. Secondly, and most importantly – what in the world is going on with the right underarm? What is all this extra fabric for? It’s like they expect me to be growing another breast under my armpit!

Originally, I had thought I had done something wrong when tracing, but when I looked at the pattern envelope, I can see the extra material on the model as well. I really think that this top is designed to be the long, bat-wing, shirred version and that the sleeveless version was just an ‘afterthought’ on Kwik Sew’s part. What a stinker of a pattern.