Inside the anna tunic

I was pretty excited by this challenge, mainly because I wanted to see inside everyone else’s creations. I hummed and hawed about which in the line up of projects would best best to show the insides of. And in the end went with the amy butler anna tunic.

I love a good, clean inside finish. Which I think I’ve inherited from my Grandma. She always use to say your insides should be good enough to wear your garment inside out. It took me a long time to begin finishing my seams properly. I started with just zig zagging my edges, and then began experimenting. This experimental phase was long before I knew about the world of blogging, or even thought to google it. For a short while my approach was to make my seam as normal (ie on a 3/4″ allowance) then try to turn the edges in on themselves and sew it. Essentially a very fiddly, backwards, painstaking, way of doing French seams (which at the time I didn’t know existed). Then I discovered French seams and it was like my world was revolutionised. I French seamed everything – whether it was appropriate or not.

So anyway back to the anna tunic. I’ve made this a few times over the last couple of years for myself and this time am making it for my BFF. We bought this fun mushroom print fabric back in December at Ditto in Brighton and I promised to make her a top. She’s probably forgotten by now.

I’m doing a few things differently from the pattern. I’ve not lined it and have instead opted for bias binding around the arm holes.

The 1/2″ seam allowance made me think twice about French seams but as the fabric is pretty light weight I think I’ve gotten away with it.

Top stitching is not exactly my forte, or rather ensuring the ‘insides’ are folded exactly so, and then top stitching isn’t my forte. Though I did a pretty go job along the front especially over the front gathers:

The back of the yoke however, leaves a bit wanting. And if this were the GBSB I’d surely be out. I completely failed to match up the top, and if you look closely you’ll see a bit of a mess at the bottom too:

The hem however came out particularly well:

If you’re interested in more photos and more random narration you could head over to my other blog on it here.