Collage Gather Top – my Color Me Kaffe entry

Free Spirit Fabrics Color Me Kaffe Challenge inspired me to make the Matchy Matchy Sewing Club’s Collage Gather Top PDF pattern. The challenge was to use at least three Kaffe Fassett fabrics to make a garment. So I picked four Kaffe prints to make this top. I have never mixed so many colorful prints in one garment. My top is in the Pieced Garment category. You can vote for it here, by giving it a like/heart. Voting ends on Friday, July 14. (I confess that I’d really like the Oliso iron, which is one of the prizes for winning the category.)

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. My last post was the Q&A with Nina of Nina Lee Patterns, which was posted in April. I have been sewing but not blogging. But hopefully, I will be blogging more this year.

OK, now that part is out of the way, I can give you the deets on the Collage Gather Top. This is the first one I made so I guess you could call it a wearable muslin.

I made size L, which calls for 2 yards (1.9 m) of 44″ wide fabric. I bought three fat quarters and 1.5 yards because I didn’t know how much I would really need. The fat quarters were not long enough for the center back/front pattern pieces. So I cut the yardage for those pieces. I didn’t have enough of the fat quarters for all of the gathered panels so I used two different fabrics for one and three in another, which I’ll point out below.

Collage Gather Top pattern adjustments

I made a slight square shoulder adjustment, just about 1/4 inch to the shoulder pattern piece. I left the center piece, which only has a sliver of shoulder, as is.

I thought I would play with the sleeve cuff and use two different fabrics. So instead of cutting it on the fold, I added seam allowance. However, I didn’t notice that the sleeve for the front and the back were not the same length. That meant that I wouldn’t be able to get the seams to match. Oops. So I lined up the shoulder seam to the cuff seam that I sewed, then I trimmed a couple inches on either side and sewed another Kaffe fabric. You can’t really see the third fabric because is mostly at the underarm area.

The cuff sticks out slightly because of the seam and that fact that it’s quilt-weight fabric.

In the photo below, you can see the two different Kaffe fabrics I used for the front gathered panel. And if you look very closely, you can see that I used three fabrics in that back gathered panel — a sliver of one fabric at the top of the gathering and two other designs below that. They are all in various shades of green and blue so they blend together.

Sewing the Collage Gather Top

Once I figured out which pattern pieces would go with the various fabrics, it was easy to sew. There are just seven pattern pieces: center front, center back, front shoulder, back shoulder, gathered panel, cuff, and neck bias.

The instructions were clear, including when to put in a label if you want to add one.  I sewed one that said “You can’t buy this.” If you are mixing prints and using more than one fabric for a pattern piece, you just need to remember to add seam allowance  when you are cutting the fabric.

The instructions have you topstitch the bias tape at the neck line and at the hem. I didn’t want topstitching so I handstitched the bias tape and hem in place.

Mixing prints

I had a lot of fun mixing prints — and using such bright colors in this Collage Gather Top! I got all of the fabrics at Stonemountain & Daughter Fabrics in Berkeley. And I wore it to the Bay Area Sewists Pattern Swap, where we also had our own local Color Me Kaffe Challenge. Quilt-weight fabric is a little stiff so it will puff out due to the gathering as you can se ein the profile photo. A fabric with a softer hand will not be as puffy. This is a great pattern to pay around with different prints, which also makes it an excellent scrap buster.