a 60’s style cosy funnel-neck top

In the last couple of weeks I’ve noticed a really nice little top called Toaster by Sew House Seven popping up all over Instagram. It looks cosy and very straightforward to make but me being me I thought “I can do that” so I did!

Initially I needed a suitable fabric and when I was on my outing to Goldhawk Road in London last week I spotted the very thing. It’s a felted-wool jersey in a very pretty coral colour, it cost £8.50 per metre and was 150cms wide so I splashed out on 1m50-I know, so reckless!

So next I needed to create a pattern. I rummaged through my somewhat large pattern collection to see what I might be able to hack (rather than starting totally from scratch) and found a raglan-sleeved T-shirt pattern I’d used last year with some lovely Faberwood French jersey 

New Look pattern K6230 was free with Sew magazine last year and, as you can see, I’d made the V neck version. 

This time I opted for version B with the round neck. Because I didn’t want the top to be too close fitting I opted to make the largest size so that it was roomy enough to layer up other things underneath it. I also wanted shorter sleeves with cuffs so that meant a change to the pattern. The neck-band wasn’t going to be right either so I needed to make a completely new collar pattern.

I traced off the sleeve onto spot and cross paper and shortened it and made it a about 3cms wider at the cuff edge. The new cuff is just a continuation of the sleeve plus seam allowance and a notch to make sure they get sewn on the right way around.

tracing off the original sleeve, my new hem is the curved pencil line.

It’s important to have the cuff edge of the sleeves at a right angle to the sleeve seam so that it’s a nice smooth line around the arm. You can see in the photo how I’ve used the Patternmaster to line this up.

New sleeve with it’s cuff

To make a new collar I needed to know how long HALF the total neck edge was so I pinned all the pieces together matching the seam allowances and measured carefully along the stitching line.

Measuring the neck edge to make a new collar.

I cut out and made up the front, back and sleeves. By not sewing up the side seams until later makes it easier to sew on the collar with everything out flat, then joining the underarm seams towards the end.

I needed to toile the first collar pattern to make sure it worked properly so I cut it out in some scraps of jersey and sewed it onto the neckline. I could already see that it had strange points over the shoulder seams.

 

There shouldn’t be the strange pointy bits sticking out, it should be a smooth line. The back wasn’t too bad but I wanted the front to stand away from my neck more so I needed to add some fullness to the top edge of the piece.

Version 2 was much better, you can see where I’ve added small ‘wedges’ along the top edge of the collar but nothing along the lower seam line. I then cut it in spot and cross to form a single pattern piece so that it doesn’t have to be cut on the fold of the fabric. [on thick fabric this might not be very accurate so single layers are better]

Second version of the collar, it looks a lot better.

I was reasonably confident that the collar would be OK now so I went ahead and cut it in fabric, along with interfacing. I’d done a quick test of which interfacing I wanted to use so that it had the right amount of stiffness to make the collar stand out as I wanted.

I went with the firm inter.

Because the collar involves sewing a convex and concave curve to one another it’s best sewn with the fuller edge of the front UNDERNEATH so that the feed dogs deal with the fullness as you sew, that way it makes the two edges end up the same length and a smooth flat finish. The photo here might make more sense.

The collar is uppermost with the main part underneath, the slight fullness is visible underneath.

Once the top collar was sewn on I attached the under collar to the top seam and then under stitched it to help it roll to the inside more smoothly. I overlocked the lower edge of the under collar (to reduce bulk at the seam) then I stitched it from the top side in the seam line to secure the collar down.

Stitching ‘in the ditch’ to secure the collar from the right side.

Nearly there! Time to sew up the underarm seams right throughout to the cuffs. The cuffs then turned up to the inside and are stitched ‘in the ditch’ again, like the collar. So that was virtually it until, at the last minute, I decided to add small patch pocket.

Finito!

I tried it on and couldn’t believe how well the collar had turned out!! It stood out from my neck by just the right amount. Although I had been reasonably confident to would be pretty much as I wanted I wasn’t 100% sure that I wouldn’t have to make another modified version. 

So there you have it…

Obviously this is my take on a cosy winter top but I hope it demonstrates that it can be quite simple to adapt an existing pattern to create something original of your own (although you might decide it’s easier to buy the actual pattern!) I think I’ll be making more of of these and I’m looking forward to getting a lot of wear from this one in the meantime.

Have a go, you might surprise yourself!

Happy sewing

Sue xx