Hello lovelies!  I’m so excited to finally introduce my newest exclusive piece: the Watercolor Swing Top!  Limited quantities available in my shop. 🙂

This is an ultra sweet spring/summer shirt with plenty of flowy-ness and beautiful watercolor flowers.  I love it when things turn out how they were in my head!  I purchased the watercolor print as a preorder a while ago but also snapped up these soft french terry stripes while I was at it because I knew they would pair amazingly well.  I was trying to figure out a way to incorporate a small bit of lace…then as a revelation I realized lace on the ends of the sleeves would be the perfect touch.  And there you have it!

The sleeves here are dolman, meaning they are pieced from just the front and back bodice and not as their own piece.  However, you can also see they’re pretty unique because they cut across the front/back like raglan sleeves and come to a point below the armpit.  It’s like an optical illusion!

The pattern is a modified Hey June Santa Fe.  Because of all the color blocking, I was so confused about how the sleeves would work when I started but it was actually pretty simple, since it is really a dolman at the end of the day.  I wanted something more unique for this piece and the pattern was exactly it.  The pattern itself is top-notch with a tons of options apart from this one, highly recommend!  Since I did use a cotton spandex/jersey I took out some of the original pattern’s width (2.5″ from the front and back bodice pieces and then I sewed the side seams below the color blocking with a 1″ seam allowance).  It ended up staying pretty swingy, though still flattering.  Perfect combo!

I can’t wait for it to be actually consistently warm here in Chicago (it was 59 degrees when I took these pictures, but I’ll take it!).  But anyway, I’ll be wearing this pretty much like I styled it here all summer long.  Though I do have my Driftless Cardigans I can easily throw on over it for layering, and I’ll probably wear it with my SOS jeans to work.

I really like shirts like this which can easily go from casual to “nice” with just a few tweaks.  I’m all about simple these days and making things which can be mixed and matched.  This one will be a favorite already, I can tell!

Elisabeth