I was so excited to join the blog tour, and immediately knew what I wanted to make, but I could not think of anything festive that I do. HA! My idea of a good party is to sew and drink tea and maybe invite some friends to come swim with me. I already write a lot about my sewing so that is not new to you. After much thought, I remembered that every year my family and I go to our HOAs bash at the end of July. Our HOA sure knows how to party so it is a ton of fun. They start the day with a car show (boring for me, I skip this part). Then, they have swimming, volleyball at the beach club, and next, they bring in the bounce houses, climbing walls, food trucks, snow cone stands, games, and lots of outdoor activities. Once it is evening, there is a concert on the lawn, and once the sun goes down, we have fireworks over the lake. It is a full day, and the entire family just has a blast. I also bring a handmade quilt or two and a baby carrier for wearing the baby all day.

I chose to make the George + Ginger Slash Tunic as my George + Ginger Pattern to wear for the day of festivities I am looking forward to in July. I had been eyeing this pattern since last year when I was pregnant and couldn’t wait until I was semi-back to normal so that I could make this top. Since I am breastfeeding, I modified it for easy access to nurse in. I made two tops: a practice one with invisible zippers (to make sure I even like it with zippers!) and a striped one with exposed lace zippers. I love the look the exposed lace zippers give this top!!

It was actually a really easy “hack” to do. The pattern has 1/4 inch seam allowances throughout, except the princess seams. It is like Kristi knew that I needed more than 1/4 inch for my zipper dreams. On the princess seams, the seam allowance is 1/2 an inch so that you can hem the open bottom of it in one step. There are markings on the pattern for where your seam needs to end and the open part begin. Since my zipper was 14 inches, I moved that mark up 14 inches, and put my zipper immediately underneath where my hem began. I did not want to mess with stripe matching and inserting a zipper, though, so I put the stripes vertically on the front of the bodice. My friend, Aimee, actually suggested this to me when I was telling her that I really wanted to make the top in stripes. Thanks, Aimee, for the suggestion! It saved me so many tears.

Speaking of Aimee, we are both on this blog tour and got to take our photos together. Aimee made a gorgeous top in Liverpool for her stop on the blog tour.

The fabric that I used for this top is a yarn-dyed striped cotton lycra from Made Whimsy. You can find them here. It is a pretty stable and nice weight cotton lycra so it made it pretty easy to do the zippers.

My zippers came from Hobby Lobby. The exposed brass is so fun! Before beginning my project, I ironed a 1 inch strip of fusible knit interfacing to the wrong side of where the zippers were going to be installed. Then, I followed the pattern instructions for sewing the princess seams (except moving my hemming mark up by the length of my zipper). After hemming the princess seam with a quick zig zag, I used my zipper foot and installed the zippers from the wrong side and then topstitched them again on the right side.

My sweet nursing baby! Gah. I feel pretty done having kids, but photos like these bring ALL the feels.

Do you like the exposed zipper look? I did my first trial run using invisible zippers on random fabric that I had found on the remnant tables at the local fabric district. This top turned out really nice too, and if you prefer invisible zippers, then, this might be the hack for you. I ironed the 1 inch strip of fusible knit interfacing on both sides of the zipper and carefully marked where I wanted the zipper to begin and end. You will need a 12 inch zipper (for the daring version) or a 14 inch zipper (for the regular split version).

When I first started on this top, I have to admit that my zippers were not quite invisible. After looking at what I had done wrong, I realized that when I was putting the zipper in, that I had not quite pushed the teeth to the side and sewn under the teeth. I used my invisible zipper foot and carefully pushed the teeth out of the way, and it turned out perfect. I can’t tell you how excited I got about this silly zipper becoming invisible.

I purposefully put the zipper in upside down since this one has a non-separating closed bottom. I wanted to be able to fully open the seam of the shirt when I nurse.

Caught the fever? Check out all the amazing looks in the Festival Fever line up!

Monday, June 18

Confessions of the Pink Obsessed | Diskordia’s Curvy Sewing

Our Play Palace | Wild & Wanderful | Bellephant

Tuesday, June 19

Threadistry | Cross Stitches | Middle River Studio

Liviality | Threads of Magic

Wednesday, June 20

Seams Sew Lo | So Sara Sews | Tenille’s Threads

My Crazy Crafty Beautiful Life | Aurora Design

Thursday, June 21

Middle River Studio | The Needle and the Belle
Sweet Mama Life | Sewing Scientist

Friday, June 22

Sewing Ambi | 52 Week Sewing Challenge

Needles to Say | My Sewing Roots

So Today I Did a Thing

And special thanks to our tour sponsors!
Boho Fabrics | Sincerely Rylee | Wandering Willow Design | Aurora Designs

That’s it for now, and thank you so much for reading my blog! I hope I have inspired you! You may follow me on Instagram or receive updates by liking my page on Facebook. If you want to take a look into the things that inspire me, you can follow me on Pinterest.

Disclosures: I received a copy of this pattern for free so that I could participate in the blog tour.

Photo Credit: My awesome friend, who is such a wonderful photographer, Aimee Wilson.