Today I’ve got my review of the Viola Knit Top pattern from Forget Me Not Patterns.

The Viola Knit top caters for a maximum waist size of 115cm (approx 45″) and a max hip size of 143cm (approx 56″). My Viola Top is a size 38 and I have included the optional collar. I have also modified the sleeves.

First things first, I kind of feel as though I owe the Viola Knit Top an apology.

Because damn did I swear at her multiple times in this project.

When I looked at my front pattern piece and realised how many markings I was going to have to transfer onto the front.

When I then started to actually try to join all those markings together and figure out what goes where.

I was cussing and huffing and puffing and not having fun at all.

But then, if you just do that magical thing of following the instructions step-by-step, well, it all just works!

It then came together like magic (ok I’m fully aware that the designer’s hard work was probably more at play than magic) and morphed into something rather unique.

At which point I felt inordinately guilty for hating on an inanimate object and spent the rest of the project secretly willing my new fancy tee-shirt to forgive me.

That, in a nutshell, is my emotional journey while sewing the Viola Knit Top!

Fabric Choices

My Viola Knit Top is made from a linen knit, which was actually not my first choice for this project.

I had intended to sew this from some merino knit but when I went to cut it out (I’d purchased the fabric with another project in mind), I didn’t have enough.

I then raided the stash to see what else could work and settled upon this linen knit.

Despite my love of all things linen, I don’t love linen knit.

A bit too light, too transparent. I also became scared while cutting when I realised that this fabric was doing some major “springing back” as a I cut it out. I would cut the fabric right along the edge of the pattern piece, but as I did so, the fabric would spring in a bit on itself and, in the end, it sometimes appeared to be a full centimetre or so small than my pattern piece.

Linen knits also do not have great recovery, so I wasn’t sure how it would work and whether the neckline would fit over my head.

Yet, despite my fears, the linen knit actually worked well for the Viola Knit Top. It has a lovely drape, which shows of the pleat and has no issue fitting over my neck.

The only thing I couldn’t escape is that the fabric is a lot more lightweight than what I had intended.

It’s for this reason that I decided to not use the sleeves which come with the Viola Knit Top and replace it with these shorter flouncy sleeve-ish instead. The Viola Knit Top was so lightweight that I knew I would never be wearing it in an environment that justified long sleeves. So I decided to replace it with something lighter and more summery.

I was also a tad worried that the sleeve would be uncomfortable around my arm. With my bicep size, the sleeve as designed would have negative ease, which would be fine in something like the merino knit I had intended to use, but I didn’t think it would be comfortable in this less elastic linen knit.

My sleeves were inspired by the sleeves of the Fibre Mood Agatha Dress. I was aiming for something a bit playful and fun. In the end, they came out a little shorter than would have been ideal but it was all that I could do with the amount of fabric I had left.

Marking knit fabrics

The biggest challenge in sewing the Viola Knit Top was absolutely transferring all the markings.

I am not going to lie – after all these years of sewing I have never found a good method to mark knit fabrics. I often use frixion pens but they did not mark clearly in a smooth line on this fabric – in all honesty I could barely get them to leave a visible mark at all. I felt kind of like I was trying to draw on custard.

My other go-to is chalk pens or chalk but that is even less precise!

The complex markings of the Viola Top requires you to mark not only the lines which will form your various pleats/tucks/darts, but along those lines you also mark different shapes to help you see what gets joined to what, so you are expected to also mark small circles, triangles and squares at various points so you can join squares to squares later on.

The notion that I could actually use any of the marking tools I had to mark something as minute as a small square on this fabric was laughable.

It was impossible.

I ended up doing a lot of squinting at my lines and staring at the pattern piece and trying to figure out what was supposed to go where.

In all honesty, I found it frustrating and not at all intuitive.

But it is equally absolutely true that by following the instructions and looking at the pattern pieces I was able to put it all together without a single error.

So it definitely works, I just had a few moments where it overwhelmed me.

But have faith in the instructions.

And if you know how to mark lightweight, shifty knits with precision, please tell me.

And, no, I’m not going to tailor tack anything!

So, the marking and cutting out is definitely the most challenging aspect of the Viola Knit Top.

The rest of it is a piece of cake once you’ve accomplished that.

Indeed, it’s actually really satisfying!

All-in-all, I’m really happy with my Viola Top. The details around the neck are beautiful and I also just really like the shape of it as a simple tee-shirt. I find the shaping around the waist spot on in terms of how I would like a shaped tee-shirt to fit.

In fact, this pattern has given be faith in the power of a centre back seam to help achieve a lovely fit around the waist in a t-shirt.

I would actually really love to combine the Viola Top with the pleated sleeve of the Iris tee by Forget Me Not. It seems that would be the pleated bees knees!