A Vibrant April Kickoff!

Stashbusters! I've worked all last week on this tunic so I could proudly show it to you on my first official April post. (and I'm leaving on a trip and wanted to take it along...)
This hasn't been sitting in my stash that long. I bought it in November with a gift card. It was a total fun buy and I knew I wanted to turn it into a tunic the moment I saw its lovely quilting cotton face! How could you cut this glorious print into lots of tiny pieces?
 It called to me, saying this was it's month! "Make me! Finally make me!" Alas, I had no pattern! Just what kind of tunic should I make? After long hours browsing through patterns and agonizing on pinterest I finally had a direction.

source found through Pinterest

I really liked the contrast yoke, hem details and the bell sleeves. I knew it would give me plenty of wearing ease with a woven. BUT, I am not built like these lovely Asian girls and knew I would have to be very, very careful or...

AGH It's a maternity top for the nonmaternal! Ok, I'm maternal or Aunternal,
 I just don't want to look pregnant when I'm not. I'm perfectly happy to wait
for that stage of life...

I drafted my bodice from my Lutterloh kit, (which was a splendid experience!) but added too much fullness to the "skirt portion" ending up with as my friend kindly put it, "a really cute maternity top" Thank you Skype and good conversation. An hour later we'd finished chatting about life and I'd ripped out the basting, stitching and serging and was ready to recut the poof with much better results.

I added some elastic to the back to trim my silhouette a bit more and add some shaping. I couldn't decide on a hem length so decided to hop on the high-low trend just a little bit.

Oh the details! I love this turquoise VELVET ribbon from my stash!! I have no idea how it will wash but we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. The buttons and tabs were last minute additions which make me so SO happy. Isn't it amazing when you can find stash notions for your project that look like they were MADE to be together! 

I'm so tickled I got this done! I think it will see quite a bit of wear as the season starts to change because of it's length and I can throw a layer under it if needed. Thank you Vibrant April and Rae's Spring Top Sewalong! Without those two things to push me I probably would have left this fabric alone for awhile longer. And wouldn't that have been a shame! ;)