The Picnic Top is a Patreon Exclusive pattern by Charm Patterns by Gertie. Its an adorable cropped blouse, inspired by the 40’s and I knew as soon as I got my Patreon membership that I wanted to make it. It’s completely lined, has sweet puff sleeves, a button opening at the front and comes in two lengths – waist length and also ‘cropped’ length in sizes two to twenty.
Fabric
Fabric recommendations for the Picnic Top include light to medium weight material such as cotton poplin and lawn, seersucker, lightweight denim and twill, linen or canvas. I used the Jelly Popcorn cotton sateen from Minerva and due to the fact that it’s a small little top, I was able to cut it out of the fabric scraps I had left from making my shirred dress (see my post on that dress here), with just one additional piece of other similar weight cotton lawn for one of the lining back pieces which isn’t visible from the outside! This fabric worked really well and gave the top just the right amount of structure. It was also really easy to sew with and comfortable to wear.
Although not on the list of suggested fabrics, I am tempted to try this pattern with a lovely brocade or jacquard. If I can find one that’s not too heavyweight, I think it would look gorgeous!
Fitting
Fit wise my measurements fit into the size 6 and I sewed up a toile to see how it worked out. Overall the fit was absolutely fine. The bust darts were in the right place for me and the shoulder and side seams sat perfectly in the right place which was a relief. Even though I opted for the waist length as opposed to the cropped length, I still found it came out very short on me. For my actual top in my nice fabric, I lengthened the pattern pieces by an inch. It is still really quite short but then that’s the intended design and because of that it works brilliantly with high waisted trousers and skirts. The top front and top back pattern pieces have a helpful lengthen / shorten line, so its really easy to add further length if you wanted to. Aside from the length, I didn’t have to do any other pattern adjustments.
I’ve talked about how great Charm Patterns are in a previous post in terms of the fitting and sizing advice, so I won’t go into that again here, but safe to say that the Picnic Top is no exception.
Sewing
In terms of sewing, the Picnic Top comes together relatively quickly. There are only 16 steps in the instructions and the thing that helped me the most was the excellent sew-along video that accompanies all of Gertie’s Patreon patterns. Its really detailed and although it assumes some knowledge, as long as you have made a few patterns before, you should get on fine. Skills that you get to practice as part of this pattern include staystitching, sewing darts, gathering sleeve caps, inserting sleeves and sewing a lining. The pattern also has buttonholes but I cheated on my version and used Prym snaps instead which are much quicker. I just happened to have some in the perfect colour, so decided to postpone the buttonholes to my next version!
The only section that I found tricky was finishing the sleeve and underarm. Its crucial that you accurately mark the circles on your pattern pieces before you start sewing and then make sure that you pivot at exactly the right point when sewing. Otherwise its really easy to get some of the raw edges from the other pattern pieces poking through your stitching line. Its not the end of the world and quite easy to unpick and re-sew but just a bit annoying!
I tend to be quite a slow sewer but I think a beginner to intermediate level sewer could put this pattern together within a day.
Style
The style of the Picnic top is definitely vintage as with most of Gertie’s patterns; inspired by the cropped style tops of the 1940s. As mentioned above, it looks cute with high waisted skirts or trousers or if you are feeling brave, you could wear something lower and expose your midriff! As the name suggests, it was designed to wear to picnics in the sunshine and the short sleeves and lightweight fabric mean that it’s definitely a summer piece. Although I can also imagine it layered over a white shirt perhaps to get more wear out of it come the Autumn. One design option, although not specifically stated within the pattern, is to make it sleeveless and I think this would make it easier to layer over a longer sleeve shirt or to put a cardigan over the top.
Gertie also has a free ‘Picnic Skirt’ pattern available on her website here which is intended to go with this top. It’s a very full, gathered design which is probably not for me but would look amazing if you like that sort of look. I prefer something more fitted and so have paired my top with a Bibi skirt from Tilly & the Buttons in these pictures. At some point, I would also like to make the Charm Patterns Stanwyck Skirt in the pencil version which would be ideal to pair with this top.
All in all, another lovely pattern from Charm Patterns but then I never expect less from Gertie!
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