On top o' this!

Well, it started with this.

Not the trousers! I've not yet reacclimatized to the paper bag waist trousers, having made them (badly) and worn them last time they were a thing. No, the top. I wanted it.  And being a sewist, I could have it, even if I couldn't find the actual article on the mango website, even after navigating away from the "let us show you something more seasonally appropriate for your antipodean lifestyle" (ie flog you at colonial prices what we can't sell in the high street sales) page. (I wish you would make your links more specific, Graun, then I might just pay to read you)

But I'm trying to sew from stash right now, because frankly that pile is getting out of hand.

And I had no knit that would work. Stymied.

But I had recently made this top.

So I knew that I had a pattern that would work in a woven, and I started to turn over my woven stash instead.

(I made the top from a pattern I traced from an unblogged top I made from an adapted Burda top pattern that I can't find and couldn't be bothered either finding the traced pattern or retracing it.  Man these things can get complicated quickly!)

Nothing.  Well, there was a black fine gingham that I liked the idea of but it was too stiff. By now I think I was starting to be influenced by this image, which I had liked a bit when I saw it. 

https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2017/feb/17/what-wore-week-statement-sleeves-jess-cartner-morley

 But then I delved into very deep stash.  And found this  fabric, of which I had pretty well

dispaired and consigned to "Household" (or in stash terms, limbo). I pulled it from the remnants table on my first trip to the Remnant Warehouse, I do believe, intoxicated by all the decent inexpensive fabric. But it was slubby and irregular and half the width was cream and tan (since removed, overdyed orange and put in "household" as well).

Place and cut pattern and sew into wearable top = 1.5 hrs including watching Grand Designs.

Devise, position and attach arm ruffles = 3 hrs and counting.......

And the result is this sleeve, a compromise.  But silly enough to make a statement, of sorts.

But, as it happened, not enough of a statement. I wanted trim. So it was back to the stash, where I found a length of daisy chain lace? braid? from I know not where nor when, which was just enough for this:

Here it is, caught in action at work. Where, judging by the reactions of interested colleagues, I have hit upon a top with sleeves which are indeed the perfect current statement (the statement being "it's all a bit much so let's be silly").

PS Many thanks to my daughter for suggesting the little bit of trim in the middle of the neckline - which makes the top, imho.