New Look 6648 x 3, plus another pair of Jalie jeans

Hi there.
Long time no see!
yeah I know, I've been offline for quite awhile.... have been busy as usual.

Recently I've been on a New Look 6648 blitz.
For some reason this pattern seems to have done a bit of a revival on sewing.patternreview.com, as quite a number of people have made it up recently...



I've had this pattern since it first came out, easily 7 years ago, maybe longer?
But amazingly, its still available.
And a good thing too, as it is a really nice top with a few nice variations.

I made it up when I first bought it, & it hasn't seen the light of day since.
Then  recently I decided I wanted a nice loose flowing top with big sleeves & a band on the hips....
I wanted a top to go with my new version of the fabulous Jalie jeans...
(sorry, don't have any better photos, am on my own today!)

The last few pairs I made are now way too big & fall down, not a good look, so in time for summer I decided another pair of white jeans was the go, this time with a skinny leg.
(easy to do, from the knee line down to the hem, I drew a line parallel to the straight grain for both inside leg & side seams on both front & back pieces. easy peasy!)
they fitted perfectly, & the skinny leg looked pretty good too (so will definitely make another pair in denim).

I had recently bought a beautiful red floral slinky knit (on Ebay of course!) & thought it would look nice made up in view A.
After making this top, I remembered why I didn't ever make it again the first time around, I hate the gathering on the band!
Fiddly, & doesn't sit right IMO (I'm alwas fussing with it to get it to sit right).
I'll still wear it, as even with that little bugbear, it turned out just how I'd hoped it would & looked great with the jeans.

Then yesterday, I went to my favourite fabric shop, JUST to get a reel of thread.....
well you know how THAT goes, $200 & quite a number of nice pieces of fabric later (& the reel of thread I went in for!!), I have more projects to sew - hehe!
In amongst my new goodies, was the last of a roll of another piece of slinky knit, this time in a blue & lime zebra stripe on a white background... sounds a bit weird, & in fact I nearly walked past it, but something about it made me go back to it, & now I just ADORE it! Sadly they didn't have another roll, so had to make do with the 1.6m that was left on the roll....
so out of that I got another top in view B (this time with a plain hip-band) and a sleeveless V neck top from New Look 6569 (another favourite pattern).
looking good!

And then this morning, whilst rummaging thru the stash looking for something else, a bit of inspiration struck.
I found a scrap of whit knit & was wondering whether to keep it or not, when I noticed it was a similar weight to another knit in a green & white print.
So I decided yet another big top was in order, this time with the white binding around the neckline!
But to make it a little different, I decided to have some gathering & some keyhole openings on the shoulder...

To do this, when I pinned the tissue to the fabric, I placed the fold line on the tissue 10cm (2 inches) away from the fold line of the fabric, for both front & back pieces.
For the keyhole openings on the shoulders I measured 12.5cm (5 inches) from the neck edge (along the shoulder seem) & cut a little scoop shape out of the shoulder area, so that when the shoulder seams were sewn & the opening was bound with the white knit it would be a teardrop shape. Hope that makes sense?
One little goof I made was not to check the amount of stretch in the print, as the hip band is cut along the grain. Mine ended up not having a terrible lot of stretch,  but thankfully there's enough give in the fabric that I got away with it (in hindsight though it would have been better cut across the greatest stretch, we live & learn!)
So my order for making up was to sew the shoulder seams, bind the teardrop shaped shoulder openings, then run some gathering stitches before attaching the neck binding....
same for the bottom band, I ran some gathering stitches then attached the bottom band (again a plain band).
It didn't take all that much longer than the original top, & it turned out quite nice IMO!

Anyway, here are a few photos so you can see for yourself - enjoy!

And because I haven't quite finished with this pattern, I've also got view D cut out (the sleeveless cowl neck top) from some left over panel print fabric.... will post that once its done too.