Rainbow Collection: Bethie's White Eyelet top

This may be a first for me--Bethie seemed to like her Christmas gift. WHAT?!

This eyelet top has been in my brain for a while. The fabric was picked up at a sale in a storage unit in Davis from when Riki was...selling fabric, I don't remember the line of reasoning behind it. This was probably the most usable piece of fabric I bought that day (what am I going to do with that army green wave design?) in spite of it being a smaller piece; I originally planned on making a dress for Stella, thinking that Beth would be crazy about it. I kept not making the dress and eventually adjusted my goal to make a top for Beth, which I imagined would pair perfectly with a dark grey cardigan (neutral colors to achieve her goal of looking French). I'd made the Sorbetto earlier this summer for a hangouts top and had originally planned to make the eyelet into a tank top, but it seemed like the right thing to do to slap some sleeves on it and make a delicate yet casual short-sleeved shirt. Claire of Sew, Incidentally drafted a pattern for sleeves for the Sorbetto and shared it on the Sew Weekly, so I was set.

I paired the eyelet with some tannish-gold liner fabric to provide much-needed modesty while giving the illusion of showing bare skin. Construction was not too complicated, but the lining caused some strife. The Sorbetto is not usually lined and I improvised on using the lining as facing, so there were some imbalances when I tried to affix the lining around the armholes to the shell fabric and sleeves. Specifically, the sleevehole lining came up higher than the sleevehole shell fabric, which was ugly and led me to curse and seam rip and curse some more. The only way I knew to solve the issues that rose out of using the lining as facing was to topstitch the hell out of everything--the neck opening and sleeves are topstitched into oblivion. Note to others: consider how fabric shifts when you're using lining as facing!

You've been topstitched!

I hereby declare that this top fulfills my Rainbow Collection: White requirement! I wonder if I have enough of this eyelet to make another Sorbetto...