This summery little number is the Free Spirit Tank by Patterns 4 Pirates. I actually made this last summer about the same time that I made my Rumi Tank Dress (which is why you may notice that my hair is the same color in both sets of photos). I was going on a tank dress odyssey trying to find one I like. I believe my perfect tank dress is actually a blend of the two. I like the top of this one much better because I can wear a normal (i.e., not a racerback) bra with it. However, I like the bottom half of the Rumi a bit better than this one because it’s a bit more fitted though still flowing. This summer I’ll try to frankenpattern the two and see if my ideal can be achieved.
I made a size small on top graded to a medium at the hips just for a bit of extra flow. With a tank dress they’re already so roomy you don’t really need to grade unless you want to.
Admittedly, this one ended up a bit short due to a lack of fabric. The fabric is a wonderful lycra from Stonemountain & Daughter. It’s got a great weight to it and it’s not shiny, but more soft. Seriously, I would buy more if they still sold it. I originally bought it to make leggings so I only bought a yard and a half which was a snug fit for this one. I made it as long as I could, but this is really closer to the tunic length than the dress length and I would definitely of course wear this with leggings if I ever wore it to work. However, this length is perfect for my next beach vacation (whenever that happens again . . .)
As you can see, it barely covers my *ahem* assets. But over a swimsuit? Perfect. Also, given the fabric, it would dry super quick so even more reason it’s perfect for a beach vacation.
However, we haven’t even gotten to the best part — the pocket!
I only added the one because I was trying out a technique I’d only tried once before which was to put an invisible zipper to close the pocket. As a rule, I don’t really like inseam pockets because I find things tend to fall out of them. Plus, since I was thinking this was something I would potentially wear on vacation or to the beach, having a zipper seemed even more important so things like credit card or room key don’t fall out.
The other aspect of this pocket was that I didn’t want it flopping around like inseam pockets typically do. So I ended up top stitching it to the front. That’s what I have the close up photo above. The cool thing is that the print on the fabric is so busy (in a good way) that you can barely tell there’s a pocket there. You might have zoom in to see the stitching, but I promise it’s there. Anyways, super proud of how it turned out. On elf these days I’ll get a tutorial together on how to do an invisible zipper closed pocket like this.
In the meantime, please check out how super happy I am about this pocket:
Now I’ll go back to dreaming about my next beach vacation . . .
