My first indie pattern – Sinclair patterns – Jolee top

After discovering the online sewing world on you tube and instagram this led to the discovery of lots of indie pattern designers. Prior to this I had only ever tried the big 4 patterns. This was mainly due to the fact that when I first started sewing there weren’t many indie designers about so they just didn’t pop up when I was googling where I could buy sewing patterns from. 
My first foray into the indie world was actually as a pattern tester for Sinclair Patterns – a designer I found on Instagram. A call was put out for beginners to sewing knits and as I haven’t had any success with them before I fit well into this category and was very happy to be chosen.

The Jolee top is a longline tank top for knit fabrics. It recommended quite a stable knit for beginners but being me I never make things easy and I wanted to use a thin viscose jersey I’d got from Fabworks in one of their flash sales.

My measurements put me between US8-10 so as my jersey had more stretch than the 15% recommended I opted for the smaller size. The fabric was awful to cut out as it was so slippery – I really need to invest in a rotary cutter!

I found this pattern easy to follow and the instructions were full of recommendations, tips and techniques to help beginner sewers that had never used knits before, right down to all the equipment you need such as a twin needle.

Unfortunately I managed to break the twin needle I bought specifically for this – what sewing machine has a twin needle stitch where the position of the needle is such that the needle hits the plate? Anyway, I managed to find the twin needle that had come with the machine and all was well again – I just used it with a straight stitch instead and I was very happy with how the topstitching turned out.

The only place I had real problems with this pattern was with the arm and neck holes. I found getting the length of the bands difficult to get right as it all depends on the properties of your fabric. I did it a couple of times and it looks fine but they do stand away from the garmet a bit so it’s something I need to get better at.

The only thing I found odd about the pattern was not having the usual 1.5cm seam allowance but other than that I think it’s a good pattern and definitely the simple make I needed for my first time working with knits.

Have you tried this pattern? Let me know how you got on! I’d love to see some different versions

Until next time, happy sewing!

Rach x