Purple Twist Knit Top

As detailed in my last post I've been trying to make a shirt to go with the shorts that I made for round one of the Pattern Review Sewing Bee  last year.  After finishing my purple linen shirt I just wasn't convinced that I was going to wear it so I started thinking of other options.  I didn't really want to go out and buy new fabric, but them I had a brain wave.  

A while ago, I had a very thin purple knit fabric that I tried to make a long sleeve wrap top out of .  Unfortunately the wrap part of the pattern never worked and I never ended up finishing it.

 The solution - why don't I reuse that fabric to make a little summer tank top.

The first thing I did was to cut off the sleeves about 2cm away from the seam line.  I then turned the seam under and top stitched it in place - instant facing on a sleeveless top.  

 The top was very long so my second order of business was to turn the bottom edge up about 9cm  and then serge along that line effectively creating a band around the bottom of the shirt.  

That just left the bottom band at the front that I could play around with to create a little visual interest.  My final solution was to twist the two sections of the band around each other and then sew them back into the opposite side seam creating a nice little twist and some ruching along the bottom band at the front.  

Not too bad for an couple of hours work (and most of that time was spent playing around with different options.)  It's not the most greatest shirt around, mainly due to the cheap crappy material that it's made out of, but it's functional and much more wearable now than it was before.