Batman merino top

This project was brought to you through a comment made by Sara, introducing the letter B for Batman. And Broken.  I was inspired by my very own little superhero, Renee, who fractured her arm in two places at school last week and went three days before it was properly diagnosed.  She's one very tough cookie.

Making this top involved a series of firsts for me - my first time using an overlocker/coverstitch for the majority of the project, my first time working with merino, my first time having to convert the machine from an overlocker to coverstitch and my first time doing appliqué.

So, I sat down in front of my shiny new overlocker, turned it on, and waited for a few seconds to see if I would automatically turn into this a-ma-zing seamstress, but nup, I just make more expensive mistakes that are really timeconsuming to undo.  Or impossible to fix.  Like the fact that overlockers cut off the seam allowance.  That I hadn't allowed for.  Ahahahahahaha...ahem.

It took me 4 hours to convert my Huskylock S21 to the coverstitch function and an hour and a half to change it back to being an overlocker.  An improvement, wouldn't you say?  I shall conquer this machine mountain, you just wait and see.

In my stash was a very small amount of merino in an interesting shade of calf scoury yellow and I teamed it with an old pair of leggings of Sienna's that I had planned to mend (honest!), but it was too good a combination to ignore.  I printed out an image of the Batman logo and used it as my template for the appliqué.

This merino of questionable colour is quite soft to the touch and would be so warm to wear so it seemed perfect for a baby's top.  Here are the leggings, enjoying their new lease of life as sleeves:

Constructing a garment using an overlocker was quite different for me in the sense that I needed to work backwards and coverstitch the necklines and bodice and sleeve hems first and then overlock the side seams together.

Sewing merino was also interesting as I am unaccustomed to working with stretch fabrics and found unrolling the edges of the merino as I overlocked a little fiddly but I much prefer using my fingers to guide the fabric through than pinning the garment to within an inch of its life.

This top is destined for another friend who had a little boy a few weeks ago.  I'm sharing this project over at Sewing Barefoot.

Time taken: 1 day
Degree of difficulty: Mastering my overlocker will be a work in progress, making the garment is very straightforward and I enjoyed appliqué so much I will definitely be trying it out again
Result: Even though I heavily criticized the colour of the merino, I really do like it.  I hope the top fits otherwise someone in this house might have a very well-dressed doll instead.