Today I’m sharing another make from the latest issue of Fibre Mood magazine (issue 7): the Glory top.

And, I have a confession to make: through no fault of the pattern, I hate this darn top on me!!

You know those projects where you have a vision in mind and then, when you see it on yourself, your only reaction is “ughhhh”?

This lovely stretch velvet was something I picked up at a fabric market a couple of years ago. I’ve spent the last couple of years pulling it out of my stash periodically just to stroke it – it is that soft and strokable!

So I’ve had the idea in my mind of a cosy winter sweater in this pink velvet for a while.

Then, when I saw the Glory Top in issue 7 of Fibre Mood, I thought “perfect, this is a way to take that idea and class it up a notch”. And, since one of the Glory Top samples in the magazine was in velvet, I thought this would be fine.

And off I went.

Velvet woes

This was my first time ever sewing with velvet.

I bet many of you can imagine where this is going. And you’d be right!

Just after I’d cut out my Glory Top – it’s a size L, in case anyone is wondering about specifics – I thought I’d better do some research on whether there was anything special I needed to know about sewing with velvet.

I stumbled upon this article from Seamwork. The main takeaway for me was that you don’t necessarily want to be fussing too much over fine details for your first time sewing velvet.

Ooops.

I’ve got buttons, cuffs and gathers to do.

In velvet!!!

Thick velvet!!!!

Oh well, too late. The project was already cut out at that point.

I decided to skip the buttons on the cuff in the name of detail minimisation and to just sew it just as a simple band. But there wasn’t much I could do to change the neckline and shoulder closure.

So I tried to be positive.

Undaunted.

I can do this, I thought! After all, the magazine shows the Glory Top in velvet. It must be possible…

Well, I’m sure that it is possible.

But for a more velvet-experienced sewist than me.

Dog’s breakfast

So, ummm, somewhat predictably, the neckline and button fastening along the shoulder look totally disastrous.

My collar is extremely floppy and shapeless – the opposite of the kind of classy this style is supposed to evoke!

And don’t even get me started on that shoulder placket.

My sewing machine simply would not co-operate to sew buttons into the velvet.

At all.

Of the 6 buttonholes I sewed, only one of them worked. In another recent post, I complained about sewing buttons in corduroy. That was a frickin’ walk in the park compared to velvet!

This Glory Top would honestly have looked better if I had just cut some holes with scissors.

In addition, I think the main reason the shoulder looks so chunky and awkward is that my velvet is just way too thick.

When I see other people’s lovely velvet versions of the Glory Top, I can only think that they are working with a lighter weight velvet.

At the shoulder, the button placket is made of two pieces which are each doubled over. So that’s four layers of velvet on top of each other at the shoulder.

It hurts my eyes just thinking about it.

A healthy failure

Well, on the bright side, I’ve learned plenty. Don’t make tiny little buttonholes in velvet. Don’t gather velvet. You can manually adjust the tension on your sewing machine.

But it has been a while since I have sewed a project that I have tried on at the end and simply thought “I will never, ever wear this”.

And, I’m not gonna lie, that feeling kind of sucks! Sucks your sewjo right away…

I very nearly didn’t even blog this Glory Top because I couldn’t bear the thought of putting it on to photograph it. And creating a permanent photographic record of this one on me!

You can probably see this in the very first photo of this post – it’s definitely my “forcing myself to grin and bear it” smile!!

In the end I forced myself to blog this Glory Top in service of the greater sewing good – so that maybe one day, someone out there will read this blog post and think the better of sewing something like this in thick-ass velvet for their first every velvet project!!

And, personally, I really like reading about other people’s sewing failures. And not just by way of schadenfreude but because I can really learn from it! So I figured that if I find it helpful to read about failures, I’m probably not alone.

In addition, I think it’s useful to say loud and proud “see, everyone f*$@ it up sometimes”.

I would love to hear any ideas people might have for getting projects like this to work well in velvet. I’ve seen other velvet Glory Tops out there and it features in issue 7 of Fibre Mood itself, so I know it must be possible!

In the meantime, I do have plans to eventually return to this pattern for some lovely viscose in my stash. Although there is also the Fibre Mood Victoria which could be a good option!

As for velvet, well, let’s just say I’m not in a rush to return it to my sewing queue…

No matter how soft and tempting it may be…

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.