The velour was bought to make a dress.
But–well–how many pink velvet/velour dresses does one person need?
(They haven’t been blogged yet, but I’d just finished two pink velvet/velour dresses. So this would have been #3.)
And the velour is so thick, so plush, and so soft, that I very selfishly did not want to reserve it for occasional wear as a dress. A pink velour dress–particularly third of three–might be worn once in a month. A shirt you can wear once a week.
So I wanted a shirt.
It’s velour: something with a lot of seams is going to be tricky to pull off, given how slippery it is.
It’s thick: Pleats, folds, tucks and ties will be too cumbersome.
So I didn’t want something too fussy. But I didn’t want it to be too casual; I want to be able to wear it to work. It couldn’t look like a sweatshirt.
A semi-fitted t-shirt with a peplum should do the trick. Yes? But find me a semi-fitted t-shirt with a peplum suited for extremely stretchy velour knits. All of the patterns I could find were for wovens.
Ultimately I settled on B6489 (mostly view C with sleeves from D), for wovens, and set about altering it and sizing down for a knit. This wasn’t too taxing: I measured the waist pieces and marked a width that would give me just a bit of positive ease (I did not want this shirt to be snug), left the hips on the peplum quite full, measured the width of the back to make sure it wasn’t too excessive and nipped it in a bit, and then (of course) added across the bust (sigh–but just a smidge), and then graded between the marked points.
It worked beautifully. It’s so soft and so, so warm (pretty crucial for this brutal winter we’ve been having), and very pretty, and can be worn with just about every pair of pants I have. I wore it out a few times over the winter holidays, and let me tell you, considering how infrequently I bothered to get out of my pajamas over those two weeks, that is high praise and a statement of deep approval. Every time I wear it to work someone tells me how much they like it.
And since I bought enough for a dress, I have about a metre left over. To be used for what? I’ve been thinking maybe this skirt:
We’ll see.
Zoopolis 