Made By A Fabricista: Having fun with ITY border fabrics

Hello sewing friends! I’m back on the blog today continuing to share my obsession with sewing ITY fabric. If you’ve seen any of my previous posts, you know that I like to shout from the rooftops about how much I love creating garments with ITY.  ITY is short for Interlock Twist Yarn, and the name describes the construction process. The key thing to know about this fabric is that it is usually wrinkle-resistant, silky and smooth to the touch, and despite being polyester, feels relatively cool to wear in the summer too.  Here is one of my all time favorite dresses I made from ITY a few years ago which has been in regular rotation in my work wardrobe:

And here is the awesome thing about ITY and Fabric Mart - this fabric is super popular with designers and so Fabric Mart is always picking up new and on trend stock. When I browse the website, it is always the first section I check because there are some GORGEOUS fabrics I’ve seen and grabbed over the years. Here’s a favorite top of mine:

Oftentimes I see ITYs pop up on the website that have a wide border – so there is the main featured print and then a different print that runs either selvage to selvage or perpendicular to the selvage (so up and down). I have a few cuts sitting in my stash but until now, I hadn’t taken the time to incorporate the border into my design. So I grabbed two fabulous prints with borders and made two entirely different looking tops. Let me share these new makes and tell you a little bit about my process.

First up – the simpler print which is a lovely salmon color and combines a solid with a gingham print. I fell in love when I saw it; it was giving me serious Spring vibes after a long cold winter! I made a short sleeve banded tee from one of my go-to patterns – Pattern Emporium’s Bestie Tee. I’m not overly tall but for this pattern, I used the tall cut line for the bodice (or else I find it too short for my liking) and made the cap sleeve version. Here’s how it turned out:

For this top, I positioned the fabric so that the gingham print ran directly down the center of the bodice. This is where sewing with a projector definitely comes in handy, because I am able to directly project the full bodice image onto my fabric and get that print exactly where I want it. 

Here is one of the small downsides of sewing with border prints or asymmetrical designs – it’s hard to be efficient with your fabric. So, there is a little more wasted fabric after you’re done. And since the gingham print part made up less than half of the real estate of the fabric, I didn’t have enough left to do the same thing for the back. But I rather like the look of the full solid back:

For the second top I made, the fabric was a bit more diverse in terms of the design. There are three different things going on with this fabric! We have two solid colors –white and taupe - and then a smattering of organic black dots that are thickest in the middle of the fabric and then thin out on the edges. I LOVE this fabric! Again, a projector was very handy to tailor my pattern placement, but definitely not required. Here is what my pieces looked like after I cut them out:

For reference, this is the Emma top from Sonia Estep Designs. I hadn’t made this one in a few years and wanted to do a dolman style top, so dug this one out from deeper in the files. I sized up two sizes to get a looser fit and opted to add the long sleeves but then cut them shorter to get more of a ¾ sleeve look. Here’s my top:

I love that slouchy dolman feel!

And here is the back:

I love how the little dots pop on the neck and waistbands:

The second top is my favorite of the two, but it was a close competition.

I hope these makes inspire you to try sewing a top in a border print or asymmetrical fabric. There are so many lovely prints that show up often on this site! The highest praise I can get from my kids (and hey, it’s not often, they’re teenagers) is that something I made looks like “it came from the store”. And that’s what I heard about these tops. 😊

Have you sewn with ITY border fabric? Did you love the result? Any tips to share?

Happy Sewing!

Andrea  |  @happy.things.here