Vogue 8815

Boiled Wool Knit Peplum Top

Peplums, lace and faux fur are all over the place this winter. Everywhere I go I've seen them. I made a faux fur vest a couple of months ago, a lace top and cardi a couple of weeks ago, and so it was time to look into making a top with a peplum. I chose Vogue 8815 which everyone and their blue-eyed puppy seem to have made. It has 35 reviews to date on the Patternreview website. I'm always lagging behind on these popular patterns!

While getting into trouble one morning on the emmaonesock.com site looking at sweater knits, I came upon a beautiful deep blue-violet boiled wool knit. Here is the description from the site:

This comes from an enormous shipment from Segeco, a French clothing manufacturer--the fabrics are not produced in France, but the clothing is. This is a fabulous nubby wool boucle' knit, I think it's boiled due to its density and texture, and it's medium weight with lovely drape and some body.  It has sweatery give in the width only.  It has the same nubby surface texture on both sides, and it doesn't seem to fray... Treat as you would any fine sweater knit

 It is really a luxurious fabric and pure pleasure to work with. 

 To keep the seams flat, I topstitched the dart and waistline seams  1/4 inch away from the seamline, since they were pressed to one side.

 
I pressed the sleeve, side, and shoulder seams open and topstitched them on both sides of the seam:

 The topstitching gave just the right flat finish to the seams that I was looking for without running the risk of overpressing.

I also added a facing to the neck, since I thought using bias tape as recommended by Vogue was too cheesy a finish for this lovely fabric.

I chose to place the garment's waistline at my natural waist, not the high waist as designed by Vogue.

I did not line this garment, as I plan on wearing a thin silk top underneath. I've gotten hooked on Winter Silks lightweight silk under shirts for cold winter days, and they double nicely as a separate lining for some of my unlined sweaterknits.

The back is closed with a 22 inch invisible zipper. 

Fabric: boiled wool boucle from Emmaonesock.com
Pattern: Vogue 8815 View A with long sleeves:

To get the fit the way I wanted, I made several changes. 

1.  A 1 inch dart that formed in the armhole when I tissue-fitted the pattern was pinched out and then pivoted to the side seam, resulting in a side seam dart. The front sleeve armhole seam was modified to reflect this change in armhole circumference.
2. The armholes were raised 3/4 inch
3. The waistline position was lowered 1 inch at the center front tapering to nothing at the center back. This set the waistline exactly at my natural waistline.
4. The sleeves were shortened 1 inch.
5.  Neck facings were added, front and back.
6.  I moved the bust point 1 1/4 inch further away from the center front, since on the pattern it was only 2 3/8 inches away from the center front to start with. The original bust point position resulted in a 4 3/4 inch distance from bust point to bust point. I'm not sure who's shaped like that but it isn't me.
   
   
   Since the front vertical darts are in the correct position, the bust point mark doesn't make a whole lot of difference unless one is using the bust point to pivot a dart, as I did from the armhole to the side seam.
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   I haven't worn the top out in public yet but I'm looking forward to it!