My First Jalie Pattern

I have seen a few Jalie patterns reviewed on PR, most of which had positive reviews. I  have never used this brand of pattern before so thought I would order a few and made my selection from those patterns, that came out well on PR and of course which I liked.


Most of my patterns I purchase on-line from Sew Direct, but they only sell Vogue, McCalls and Butterick. As a subscriber to the magazine, this entitles me to purchase all my patterns for half price, and as you know I LOVE A BARGAIN.


I have not seen Jalie Patterns in any of my local shops, so my old friend Google Search came up with an on-line source Habithat.  I placed my order on Friday morning and received all three patterns on Saturday morning - I was very impressed with such excellent service.


Here is what I ordered and the link on the right is to the PR site for each pattern:-

Women's Stretch Jeans Pattern (J 2908)  Stretch Jeans

Scarf-Collar Tops Pattern (J 2921) Scarf-Collar Top

Women's t-shirt pattern (J 2805) T-shirt pattern











The first pattern I used was Jalie 2921 - Scarf-Collar Top - there are only a few pattern pieces, back, front, sleeve and scarf-collar.


I managed to trace off the pattern for myself and my daughter who is several sizes smaller than me (boo hoo) and make two tops this afternoon.


Instructions as follows:-


1. Right sides together, sew the two scarf ends together. 2. Right sides together sew the front shoulder seams to the back shoulder seams.  3. stitch the scarf-collar (right side) to (wrong side) of back and front pieces.


This is the interesting part - it uses the same method as I use for the gusset in my panties pattern -  you wrap the scarf-collar around the back and front pieces encasing them in a sort of tube like this:

Hard to believe there is a top here. Sew the whole of the scarf leaving about a 4" gap to pull the body through.  NB: make sure that if you are just pinning that there are no loose bits of the body creeping towards the scarf-collar seam line otherwise you will sew it in by accident (thankfully this wasn't the voice of experience - this time).


Sew and press the seam and then pull the body through and you will get this:-

A beautiful neat finish to the inside of the collar edge.


Next I sewed up the front seam.  I have to say I am not sure why they didn't cut this on the fold and I intend trying this out on my next top.


The pattern uses the set-in sleeve method but I followed the advice of one of the PR reviews and sewed the sleeve in and then sewed the sleeve and side seams all in one.


This just leaves the sleeve and bottom to finish and I have to say the top couldn't be simpler.  


I made three today, two for me and spurred on by my daughter's "that's nice" comment, suggested I make one for her too.  I barely had enough fabric to make her's and had to put an extra seam in the collar, but as you can see below - I don't think it is too unsightly - the sleeves are rolled up because I couldn't quite extend them to full length due to lack of fabric.

Here is Lauren's one (she didn't want a photo without make-up)  

Here are mine on Edna below and I think this is my first mother/daughter top ha ha.

My overall impression of my first Jalie pattern is GREAT - the top was super quick to make up and the instructions were very good too just going to cut one out of some nice black and white fabric I have.


More later...................................