A lace Kanerva hack and Rite of Spring Shorts

To continue calling this top a Kanerva may mislead some, given the amount of alterations that has been made to it. But I think it is important to still give reference to where it came from in the beginning, and to demonstrate just how crazy you can get with this pattern.

Firstly, the gorgeous lace is a product of Tessuti Fabrics in Sydney (oh how I miss my weekly visits!). There were two types of cotton laces used in this top and both were purchased as remnants. But I do have to thank the lovely Colette for an extra little gift of circle lace several months back, which meant I had enough to turn this top into a sleeved version.

For the photos, I paired the top with some Rite of Spring shorts I'd made last year.

But onto my long list of modifications now. The changes I made to my Kanerva were:

• changed the shoulder slope by 1cm
• increased the shoulder seam length by 1cm (my broad shoulder adjustment)
• dropped the neckline by about 2-3cm at the front and 2cm at the back
• removed the front waist dart and adjusted the bust dart accordingly
• slashed to move the bust dart to the top of the bodice
• increased the length by about 1-2cm
• removed the back buttons to cut on fold at CB instead
• skipped the peplum and self-drafted a short bottom panel instead
• drew a front panel into the bodice and split into two pattern pieces to sew together

And that's it! However, I should also point out an observation I made when wearing this top. Cotton eyelet lace isn't a stretch fabric. But it does have a lot more mechanical stretch than I'd anticipated. For this reason, the top is a lot looser than the Liberty print version I'd sewn before. I will definitely take this into account next time I sew with lace.