One Good Top Deserves Another

Isn't that pretty?  I am not referring to my top either.  More the garden bed full of orange tulips in front of me!

One good top deserves another so for my second Courtney top, I used a piece of something or other left over from my Grainline Archer.  Actually I do know what this fabric is now that I look back on my last make from it.  It is rayon, but you wouldn't know it from the way it behaves.  It is not nearly as drapey as you would expect from a rayon and doesn't have the weight either which probably made it not the best choice for my new top.  I do like it but it is a bit of a pain to press.

The only change I made to this version was, as promised, to reduce the neck width somewhat, from memory about 1cm.  This is a lot more comfortable to wear and still allows plenty of room to pull it over my head.  Will there be more?  Hmm, probably, but not in this exact form.  I am not so keen on the fold back cuffs and I would like a slightly more fitted version so I am toying with the idea of blending it with Sewaholic's Belcarra to make the ultimate version. Watch this space!

 

You may be wondering about the location of my backdrop at the top!  Those of you that are aware of the earthquakes that struck here in 2010 and 2011 wiped most of the city's history out and pretty much every other building in the CBD as well along with tens of thousands of houses and entire suburbs.  Those that didn't fall down have since been  knocked down and in some cases blown up.  I kid you not!  The building at the top is our Art Centre or what was originally University of Canterbury way back.  It was one of the few stone buildings that survived because it had already had some earthquake strengthening done to it prior to the earthquakes.  Most of it is still closed off, pending further repairs but it is standing, yay!

There are some nice buildings and art installations beginning to spring up but these are largely interspersed with what still looks like a bomb site.  The artwork above is the latest installation in the city and was kindly donated by a local businessman and installed last week.  

Yup, I think everything is going to be alright but I will be more than happy to see the back of dug up roads, and temporary fencing.  Oh, and if the powers that be are reading this, if you could stop changing the layouts of our roads that render Google maps useless that would be helpful too!