Mortem\’s Tricks or Treats: Bloody Potential.

It’s been a mayhem infused May for this gal.Frankly I’m surprised I’m still here to continue my sarcastic tirade on life.But here I am! Still stitchin’ along, but also still pondering ‘Y, tho‘ in true nihilistic manner.Here I am, on the doorstep to 29– just a little over a month from now– and the only thing I can think of is ‘sexual peak’. I think I read somewhere that 30 is the 20 for women’s libido. It just may be, because I would never in my teens or early 20’s ever would I have sewn, let alone worn, a crop top, and yet this is my second iteration of one.

Like a champ, I made Simplicity 8386 in between a little slew of projects on my chopping block– I think if my plans ever went along in a neat little line, hell might serve orange smoothies and tacos.But let’s talk about this pattern cover for a minute– how utterly boring can a pattern look? Dear Simplicity cover designers, wtf mates?!Thank the gods I can see past a bland-looking pattern, and see its beautiful potential… but let me tell ya, I had a hard time not overlooking this pattern. I think I put it back 3 times before I remembered I had a sh*t ton of knit materials these may look good with.I landed on this beautiful textured knit material which I have 8 yards of, and bloody hell I can’t remember where I bought it haha. Must have been a big sale for me to buy this amount of it.I dug it up trying to look for another knit material for another project– felt just like a new discovery! What a feelin’.I cut out view C in size 12– it has a whopping two pattern pieces in total. This is about as easy as a project can get, and it suited the need to procrastinate while still satiating a misguided desire for productivity in a life of chaos. There wasn’t much to it, but in case you needed it the instructions were crystal clear.

I’m a sucker for proper pressing in order to get the most out of garment appearance, even when it comes to using knit fabrics.Pro tip: a tailor’s clapper is your friend for pressing these kinds of tenacious knits. You get a nice fold, without the risk of your knits falling back into its previous drape or accidentally overheating your material in an attempt to use the iron’s weight to press the seam under a press cloth– which for specialty knits can be a real danger.Instead of using packaged binding for this top, that the pattern calls for, I made some binding from a few strips of the material– so I could retain the natural stretch of the material and for it to also match nicely.

I tried experimenting with the neckline by using a binded casing, instead of using the method they use in the pattern instructions; I ended up hating what I did and painstakingly removed all the woolly nylon overlocked stitches I did. I reverted back to their method, it turned out to be the best for reduced bulk; I carefully hand-stitched the casing closed, as I liked the idea of an invisible seam there.

I finished this in just a mere couple hours, sufficed to say in good timing. I wasn’t feeling great about my body; bloated, blemished like the pox, grumpy, nauseous, and hair that was so kinked and frazzled a bird mistook it for a nest. All courtesy of mother nature and her visit that went unimpeded by birth control. I’m not sure why I thought it was a good idea to get off of it, but in a bid to figure out my reluctant health… well, desperation is never a pretty color to paint with.All’s well that ends well, though– I’m about the end of her visit this month and my body is going back to relative normality… whatever that really is, all things considering.

I had further design plans for this top, like adding more texturing to the surface through meticulously designed stitches… but alas, as a rather unlucky sewist, I broke the key needle player in that game before I even begun to chuckle towards completion.It’ll just have to wait, because at $3 for one needle… I’m in no rush to get it out of my drawing board yet, heh.By itself, it makes a great goth summer staple article; simple, buildable, sweet… and that seems like enough.