My First Sewalong – Hummingbird 30 Minutes a Day

I began the Hummingbird 30 Minutes a Day Sewalong last week. It’s also  my first time participating in a sewalong.  I made the Green top from this bright knit blue fabric I got from Stonemountain and Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley (love that place!). And here’s my first Hummingbird Top. I’m very pleased with how it turned out.

All these photos were taken with my iPhone so please excuse the quality.

I didn’t exactly work on this 30 minutes a day. I traced my pattern on Day 1 – my waist is currently in between the 30 and 32 to I traced a line in between the two measurements for the top and for the peplum. I figured it was knit so I didn’t have to be too exact. ;o)

I cut my pieces out on Day 2 and did the neckline on Day 3. I don’t have a serger so I used a zigzag stitch on my sewing machine. The stretch stitch on my machine is way too bulky – sews each stitch three times so it’s really slow going. So I just used a zigzag that wasn’t very wide or long.

The trickiest part of this top is sewing strip of knit fabric to the neckline. Be sure to watch Steph’s helpful video on her Day 3 post before you do it! I gently pulled on my strip of fabric as I sewed it and it was fine.

I pressed it and it lay flat! It looks quite professional. I love this neckline.

Then I didn’t work on it again until the weekend.

I didn’t make a muslin – I like sewing dangerously sometimes. Plus I figured that my measurements were accurate and knits stretch so it had a very good chance of fitting.

I decided to hem my top as an experiment. I don’t usually hem knits because they don’t unravel. But I decided that because this top has such nice binding on the neckline and arms that it would be good to finish it off with a hem.

I decided to use some 3/8-inch fusible bias stay tape by Design Plus, which I got at Stonemountain and Daughter earlier this year. It’s not a fusible knit tape so it doesn’t stretch, which might be a problem down the road – I’m not sure. But I just ironed it on, folded it over once. So it’s just a single-fold hem. The last photo below is the zigzag stitch I used on the hem. For this my stitch width was slightly below “1” and my length was slightly over “2” on my Kenmore sewing machine. The stitch doesn’t really look like a zigzag unless you squint at it really closely.