Finally a sewing blog and an overdue one at that! For Christmas, Camilla bought me the Coco & Bettine patterns. I had resisted buying them for myself for so long and I really don’t know why, especially now I’ve made them and LOVE them! This blog post is slightly overdue as I made the first Coco top back in February and my finished my second one in June.
I don’t have a lot of experience with knit fabrics so I was a little apprehensive. The pattern instructions were so easy to work through and the color pictures made an excellent addition.
I really liked using a little stay tape on the shoulder seams and will hopefully use that technique for other knit tops/dresses.
For both Cocos I used some fabric that I had bought a long time ago at an estate sale for a very good price, probably under $3 for each 3m length. Bargain! If you follow me over on Instagram, you may recognize this post where I asked you a question. One of my fabrics had some sort of interfacing attached to it & I wasn’t sure if it should be left on or not. I ended up leaving it on and it added quite a good bit of stability to it, even though some of it wasn’t attached to the main fabric.
I’ve still not got the hang of easing sleeves into shoulders so I ended up adding a tiny pleat on each shoulder.
There was a slight difference between the fabrics in the way they they frayed when they were being cut on manipulated. For this reason, I used an interlock stitch on all raw edges and just folded over once for the hem. I would that the light blue floral fabric disintegrated along the edges as soon as it was stretched so I used the interlock stitch again, but this time did a double fold for the hems. I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed that it doesn’t come apart in the wash!
I must admit that now that they are all made up and I’ve worn them a couple of times…this is my favorite pattern up to now! I just think that these are relatively easy to whip up (I don’t know why I took so long to finish them) and they are so versatile. They would even work great as maternity tops if it wasn’t so hot over here. I’m definitely going to make the dress version soon! Let me know what you think of my Coco tops! If you’ve used this pattern, what did you think of it? I would love to know 🙂
threads + bobbins 
Very nice! Not sure how much 3m of fabric is! :o)
Sounds funny when you say “over here”. Since I’m from here. :o) But I’m in the nice cooler weather state Minnesota! I can sympathize the heat where you are, I’d melt! Welcome to the south!
Thank you! Sorry m=meters…3m is around 3.2 yards. Yes we’ve not had much of a Winter in the South at all this year so it’s very hot & humid for about 9 months. I never realized that it would limit my wardrobe options so much! I’m thinking about adapting the pattern to use a capped sleeve maybe.
These look really nice. I haven’t bought this pattern as I have a few which are similar but it might be time to try and make something like this from my existing patterns
I, too, was late to the Coco party but have since made two dresses, rather than tops – and I love them! Perfect for this stage of your pregnancy, I would have thought. They look fab!
I thought the coco was great as an intro to knits & I’ve made two so far which I love. Yours look great on you😃
Thank you! I think they are a great all-round top. I’m already looking forward to making a dress version!