Rather than keeping leftover fabric, I try to use it up at the same time or shortly after I made the main project I intended when I got the fabric. I realised as I was cutting McCall’s 7801* (blogged about here) that I’ll have some fabric leftover and decided it was time to finally make I AM Pan* which has been sitting on my To-do list for a while.

My pattern was a freebie that came with my Simply Sewing Magazine subscription, but if you want the pattern you can find it on the Minerva website* as a paper pattern or if you want the PDF from I AM patterns website .

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I liked the idea of the contrast yoke. Initially, I wanted to pair with my Minerva Exclusive Mariana Secrets Viscose Challis Fabric* leftover a red or black solid. But I did not have any in my stash and the idea was to only use what I had available. Then I remembered that I has some mustard rayon blend in my stash from an old sewing meet swap that might work.

After studying the top on the pattern envelope I felt that the back and collar details, while nice would not necessarily look good in a viscose fabric that I was using. To me, the look would be too messy so decided to not add the collar and miss the back buttons entirely. That meant that I needed to cut the back yoke and the back facing on the fold. I lined up the folded fabric with the centre back line on the pattern piece. This meant that I did not even need to redraft them, which would not be that difficult to do as all you need to do is to cut the part that extends beyond the centre back line. I matched my thread to the yoke fabric.

I love the simplicity of the blouse that I made and how the contrast of the mustard fabric compliments the pattern on the bottom of the top. Making it was very quick once I decided on the fabrics. The resulting top is fun and can be styled in several ways.

Whenever I make a project like this I discover that by limiting myself to what I already have available the results can be better than what I could have achieved by going ahead with buying the missing fabric which I thought might have worked with the print. This is another reason why I love sewing. Over the years, I’ve learnt that thinking of the pattern designer’s view as a guide rather than the only way a pattern can be made up. This led to some fun garments.

I am still in two minds about whether or not to make this in a solid colour and I want to add the collar or not. I think the collar is unnecessary. I feel that the neck opening is too wide to have that collar standing up like that. It seems it was added to the pattern to justify the price as otherwise, it is a simple top that people might not want to spend their money to buy. However, I think that the buttons on the back can be a nice design element for a solid colour top.