Sometimes you just have to make a very wide and very pompom’d top:
Pattern: Cynthia Rowley for Simplicity, S8636
Fabric: Stonemountain (sold out)
Modeling: “just touch your hair”
This was one of those “buy it NOW, figure out what to make later” purchases from Stonemountain. The poms are woven in, like a giant clip dot, and it has a fairly thick, heavy drape. It also frays like a beast, which meant the quarter-inch seam at the neck had to be unpicked and redone as a half-inch seam because it started to unravel (!).
I also took the ruffle at the bottom off (after sewing 124 inches of ruffle ON) because of the fabric’s thickness/pompom quotient–I don’t say this very often, but it was just Too Much. But I wanted more length so I ended up making part of the ruffle into a banded hem. Then I used the rest of the hem ruffle to make matching sleeve bands, also for more length. It all worked out because it would have been about impossible to do a narrow hem with these pompoms.
It’s hard to capture how tent-like this is but the bottom hem is five feet around. The colors are full Late 70s Clown. It left fuzz everywhere in the sewing room. I sewed it pretty much twice over, between the fraying and the ruffle. And I love it so much.