I love how quickly this top makes up.
While waiting for the rice to cook for last night’s dinner, I cut out another Renfrew, and had the neckband applied in the short time after putting the kids to bed. I put the sleeves on between breakfast and putting my daughter on the school bus and had the rest completed by 8:30. Total sewing time- 1 hour 15 minutes. I love this pattern.
The shoulder seams are stabilized with clear elastic. I hate the stuff. It doesn’t play nicely with any of my machines and in order to baste it into place, I had to use scraps of pattern tissue between the elastic and the presser foot so that it would feed with the fabric. I chose to baste every seam first before running through the serger to have better control of the fabric when serging. I’ve ruined neckbands in the past by skipping this step and I was enjoying the amount of control it gave me, so I did the entire top this way. It really didn’t add too much time to the sewing and I think I was more accurate than I usually am when making knit tops.
The fabric is some cotton and mystery synthetic rib knit from Jo-Ann that I bought two or three years ago. Anyways, the fabric has really good recovery, but experience from my purple Renfrew tells me that it will fade badly around the cuff hems where there are multiple layers of fabric. I also had to be careful in pressing as I was worried that the heat from the iron was leaving marks too. I really hope I don’t have anymore of this hanging around. I seem to have so-so luck with cotton knits from Jo-Ann, but I keep buying them regardless. I do like their rayon/lycra knits though and just wish they had a better color selection in that line.
I think I need to go down a size in the shoulders next time I make this. I have been cutting a straight size 10, but I have small shoulders, and I prefer the shoulder seam to pass through my shoulder point, not over by another inch like it is here. Also, I get fabric folding over above the bust and this knit has enough body that it will stand away from my shoulder if I don’t pull it down into place. This becomes more of an issue when I sit down. I should note, by my high bust measurement, I should use a 6, and then add for the bust, waist, and hips; but for a casual top, I haven’t made the effort thus far. I should have.
Can I interest you in a quirky version of a commuter box?
I’m done with the Renfrew for a while, as I have a bunch of summer tops already, but I’m looking forward to revisiting this one again in the future.
Seams Like Work 
I have the opposite issue with shoulders on this one. Slim torso but wide shoulders, I added extra length to the shoulder seam. Still need to try the alteration out though. Maybe you could remove the extra shoulder seam length rather than changing the whole size?
Hmm, that’s interesting about the shoulder seam length. I have had to do narrow shoulder adjustments with other patterns, so it stands to reason that I should with this one too. I do need to take out some of the length in the upper torso as well, so I think I’m going to retrace from scratch and see if I like the outcome better.