Do you ever have those projects where you just see someone create something on sewing Instagram and immediately decide: I MUST DO THAT! Even if, sometimes, it takes you a year to actually make it happen.

That’s the basic origin story of my foray into the DP Studio Le 004 Batwing Top.

I saw the wonderful Jasika Nicole sew a gorgeous vintage Stretch and Sew pattern (1507) out of merino wool from the Fabric Store and I completely loved the result. Here’s the original inspo post!

I wanted the same dress! But I couldn’t find the pattern. Given that the skirt is clearly just a circle skirt, I put a call out on Instagram for suggestions for batwing sleeved top patterns, which is how this DP Studio 004 Batwing Sleeve Top came to my attention.

I gotta say, when I saw it, I loved it instantly. The almost boat neck. The pleated sleeve. The wide fitted waist band. All those gathers.

I was instantly sold on it and decided to use it to try to re-create some cosy merino wool dress goodness, inspired by Jasika Nicole’s lovely dress.

Wearable toile of the DP Studio Le 004 Batwing Top

First step for this project was definitely to make a wearable toile of this new and unique pattern before I got hacking and cutting into metres and metres of expensive merino jersey.

See, even I will make toiles sometimes!

I used some jersey which had been languishing in my stash for years, for this purpose – this blue marle cotton jersey also came from The Fabric Store.

I was a little scared as to the sizing – my measurements had me a 44 at the bust, 48 and the waist and between a 44-46 at the hips. As the waistband needs to be quite fitted , I didn’t want to accidentally go too small. So I erred on the size of caution and sewed the size 48. I ended up taking it in at the hips a bit, so the 46 would have been fine for my body.

Please note that the size 48 that I cut out is the largest size the pattern comes in, so the sizes for this pattern are very exclusionary and unsatisfying.

I found sewing the DP Studio Le 004 top pretty quick and easy. The pattern pieces are very big and look rather odd. But once you put in your gathers, it is really quite intuitive to see what goes where and I didn’t experience any issues.

I would note that the pattern pieces are very wide. Further, as you are working with jersey, you don’t have the freedom to just cut on the “cross grain” as you would lose your necessary direction of greatest stretch. The pattern envelope says it can be made with fabric which is 110 cm wide but, frankly, I don’t understand how. For the dress version below, I was short on fabric and had to cut the sleeve in pieces to make it work!

I loved my wearable toile top version and think it makes a great little wardrobe addition. From my wearable toile, I learned that the sleeve was a bit long for me – I needed to shorten it by 1.5cm and I tapered the sleeve below the elbow so that it could be more fitted around the wrist.

I do want to share, however, a bit of an odd peculiarity with you.

I decided I really liked the end result – I saw it as kind of like a “not a t-shirt” t-shirt which could be really versatile in my wardrobe, so I decided to also make one more DP Studio Le 004 Batwing Top.

For this one, I used this Meet Milk basic stretch jersey with tencel. It was a really high quality fabric, with an especially fluid drape.

And, somehow, it actually looked terrible when I sewed it up.

What the?

Just when you think you know what you’re doing the sewing goddesses sometimes like to throw a curve ball at you.

I couldn’t bring myself to take photos of it, sorry. It’s been so miserable and rainy here lately that I have a back log of sooooooo many garments I want to photograph but haven’t been able to. I just don’t have the energy to add garments I don’t even want to see again to that list.

The fabric was almost too fluid for the pattern, as well as being a tad too heavy, which combined to mean that the gathers just turned into heavy puffs of bulk. And the very slippery fabric would slip around ridiculously on my neck and down my arms.

I know, it’s hard to describe. Put simply, the version in tencel jersey, really wasn’t wearable. Go figure!

Just to say that I would really recommend a lightweight jersey that is not too slippery as the ideal fabric candidate for the Le 004 Batwing Sleeve Top.

Dress Hack

So after some wearable toile distraction, do you remember how this blog post started?

I was trying to recreate a merino dress.

So let’s get to the star of the show: the dress hack!

I used the “Iris” colour of The Fabric Store’s ZQ Premium Merino. If I’m keeping it honest, I really wanted the Dusky Orchid (pale lilac) colour, but it’s been sold out for what feels like forever!

Adapting the DP 004 Batwing Dress into this “glamourous but comfy housewife extravaganza” was actually very simple.

I used the top half basically as it was, with a few minor adaptations. I shortened the bodice by one cm (could probably have done one more). As I was aware that a merino wool circle skirt was going to be heavy, I decided to add some wide elastic into the waistband, to help hold everything in place securely. So I adapted the waistband pieces of the Batwing Top so that they would be just wide enough to act as an elastic casing. This also required adapting the waistband so that there was an inner and outer waistband, as the original pattern is just a single piece of fabric folded over.

Then, it was time to add a circle skirt. Normally I would use an online calculator for this, but I decided to check the measurements of the waist of my Le 004 batwing top waistband against the waist measurement of the skirt piece of the Fibre Mood Agatha Dress – which is also a circle skirt designed for jersey fabrics. And they matched up!!

Perhaps not surprising, since I was aware that they both fitted well around my waist, but to me it felt like a little sewing miracle!

So I decided to just use the Fibre Mood Agatha Dress skirt pieces, including it’s pockets, for the bottom half of this dress.

And voila, when Fibre Mood Agatha meets Le 004 Batwing Sleeved, this plum coloured flight of fancy is the end result!!

Hemming a Jersey Circle Skirt

I believe that there are two age-old questions in the universe. “What is the meaning of life?” and “How should I neatly hem a jersey circle skirt?” (Hmmm, perhaps I should also add “should I sew side seam pockets in jersey?” to this list?)

Well, never fear, I have the answer to one of those questions.

Don’t.

Just Don’t.

I would love to hear if anyone has tips of how to do this succesfully in jersey, but I have never managed.

First, with a thicker fabric like this jersey, it is exceptionally difficult to make the necessary very narrow hem neatly. And pressing isn’t the miracle panacea when you are using jersey, rather than a woven fabric.

But my main issue is that, every time I try, even using the “built-in” walking foot feature on my Pfaff machine, my hem just becomes completely stretched out and wavy. In the past, I have also tried to use narrow strips of jersey iron-on interfacing to stabilise the hem before sewing it, but it hasn’t prevented the waves.

Plus, even when I have put in the effort and hemmed a jersey circle skirt, I have discovered that such a narrow hem, often likes to roll and flip outwards with wear anyway. So you put in all this effort and, well, it still ends up looking kind of ugly.

So I am afraid that with jersey circle skirts, I have firmly joined the team of just don’t bother! Just give it a neat trim and start swirling around, is what I say!

Truth is, even with its “unfinished” hem, I love this dress.

It has me twirling up a storm.

I’m warm and cosy.

And no-one except me (and you guys) needs to know that it’s technically unfinished!!

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