Nursing/Maternity Tops

Oops! I forgot to publish.  I was actually just going to do an follow up to this post showing the finished tops, when I discovered this one had never gone out.  Expect the follow up later today.

I have been very fond of this tanktop and made four that I wore a lot last summer/fall.  They still fit even with my giant belly (only 6 weeks to go), but they aren’t quite in season yet and they aren’t spacious enough to be nursing friendly 😦 , so when I discovered this blog post about the Four Corners Nursing Blouse on A Jennuine Life I looked into the Anna Marie Horner Book Handmade Beginnings:24 Sewing Projects to Welcome Baby.

I’m hoping to make a half dozen of these in different fabrics.  I will miss the pockets on the old version, but the opening front panel will be great for nursing.  I am skipping the buttons as they are only decorative and can get costly.  I’d rather spend a little more on the fabric.  So far I’ve made one and started another (time to fix the tension on my sewing machine before I get back to them).

It may just be me, but I found the directions a bit…cumbersome, might be the best word.  They are workable, but I found them a bit wordy in a confusing way and instead summed things up such as “steps 9-12 narrow hem bottom and sides of side panels”, or “steps 3-5 gather stitch along top of center and side panels”. I don’t have it with me at the moment so I’m just paraphrasing examples.  The longer forms might be helpful to very novice stitchers, but I feel that basic hemming directions or gathering directions might have been better as a separate section, that could be referred to for any of the patterns, but needn’t be put into each.  Maybe the book needed more length. I don’t know.

I added ruffles to the straps since I like a bit more arm coverage.  The ruffles are done in much the same way as the tanktop with pockets above.  A couple of other items of note for this pattern (the only one in the book that I have tried so far) The sizes for this weren’t nearly large enough to fit around my chest so I had to do my own increases (If you are interested in what those were let me know.) and while the hardcover book comes with some paper patterns, the Four Corner Blouse isn’t among them as it is cut in rectangles so if you want to save a little money on that the kindle version of the book should be fine.  Of course I don’t know if that will limit some of the other projects, by omitting the patterns for them as I didn’t purchase both the hardcover and kindle versions of the book.