Summer top - S1426

It's been getting hotter every day here.  It is 101 today and going to get hotter later this week.  I can stay inside where there is A/C, but I can't live my life indoors.  Well, I can, but who would want to?
Anyway, I decided I wanted to make a few summer tops.  I hate wearing a bra when it's over 100 degrees out.  It's just one more layer that I don't want.  Strapless bras NEVER work for me, and I've tried dozens.  The one that actually works the best is the nu-bra adhesive bra, but when you are dripping sweat, this is not the best option either.  And forget going completely braless.  Not happening.  Well, it will happen with the right top - and that's exactly what I was looking for.





Enter simplicity 1426.

Now mind you, I am 57, so I am not talking about going out in public, but for at home, and working in the yard, this is perfect.  This pattern would be fast and easy if it fit right out of the envelope, but for this girl, that's not going to happen either.  The first thing I did was try to figure out how to do a FBA on this.  Here is my first shot.







 I think I will need to make some further adjustments.  It fits OK, but not exactly right.  I cut off part of the curve down at CF to avoid gapping, but now it is too tight there and pulls the CF up at the band as you can sort of see in the above photo.



I actually got the cups to fit almost perfectly, but I moved them farther apart at the center.  The only problem with this was that I had already cut the band and they did not fit correctly into the band.  What I SHOULD have done was eliminate how much I moved them apart from the side seam.  Unfortunately, I had already sewn the upper band, so that was not an option unless I wanted to take the whole thing apart.
This is good enough for now and for working in the yard.  I'd like to try it again making different alterations.  Also, the other views are all cute and it's going to be a long hot summer...






A lot of people were confused by the band instructions on this, but if you followed it step by step, it was really fine.  The problem I had was with the original pattern darts.  Look at this.  Any ideas WHY the size 4 would have a deeper dart than the size 12?  This just does not make sense to me.