This whole post should be four words: made it, love it. That’s it.

The fabric is a France Duval-Stalla green grey quilted jersey I got from Supercut almost a year ago without any plans or ideas on how to use it. I was leaning initially towards making a jacket but found the fabric to be too light and soft for that; then I saw Charlie’s Inari and loved the styling.
This fabric is in reality a cotton jacquard jersey knit with the two faces inclosing polyester floats so I treated it like I do any other fabric with potentially messy cut edges (such as brocades, loose weave wools and others that either fray or roll) – I traced in chalk and cut directly with the serger. I reinforced neckline armhole and shoulder line (like this) with Vlieseline Formband Bias Tape . Of course I could only find white and of course the English, German, Russian, French and Spanish Vlieseline sites are all cool and image rich and whatnot while if you are Italian or Polish you get to take a trip back in time to the nineties, to the land of obsolete shockwave plugins. The same goes for the product packaging. Whatever….

The Inari pattern is a 2 in 1: tee dress and cropped tee. With a clean line, a bit of a cocoon shape and uneven hemline, the dress it’s quite easy to sew and great for showcasing fabric (here’s a pinboard with some of my favorite Inari versions). The two options for finishing the neckline are facings and neckband. I went with the facings (I cut them in black ponte) for I felt the use of the neckband would require some redrawing of the neckline. I topstitched at 2cm from the edge (with a chain stitch) and trimmed the facings very close to the stitching line. I bound the hem turn-up and the slit seam allowances in white (front) and black (back) because I thought it would look cool and also to stabilize them.

Pattern:
Inari Tee Dress
by Named Clothing (downloadable pdf version)
Fabric: quilted jersey 36%CO 61%PL
Size: 36 (ref. measurements 177/84/68/96 cm)
Fitting: 1 cm shoulder width adjustment (see pic)
Mods: none

Random thoughts during construction:

The nesting is annoying
The neckline facings shoulder seam allowances are weird
If I want to wear this over denim I’ll have to make a slip or a lining

Some bloggers complained about the low armscye but that actually works well for me because I intend to wear this over shirts, sweaters or long sleeved t-shirts as a layering piece. They also noted that the abduction of the arms would create pull lines from the bust. With my knit fabric this is not an issue but I can see how the low cap height reduction° (i. e. the difference between armhole depth and sleeve cap height ) could cause this. Actually the shoulder width adjustment I made reduced the armhole depth a bit and so interfered with that whole mechanism ☺
(I think I’ll do a linen summer version just to play with the geometry involved in this ;) )

°determines the angle under which the sleeve inserts into the armhole and thus arm mobility

Bugger! I wrote more than four words…

Thank you for visiting. I would love to hear your opinion and if you like it put a <3 on it!