Beach cover-up

This is another make in a dubious fabric choice.

It is a cotton voile from Oh Sew Noosa.  I have a few cotton or cotton / silk voiles in my stash that I don't know what to do with.  I suspect that the voile is too lightweight to offer good sun protection.  I'm not really one for sheer, floaty tops and it is too hot to layer something underneath.  I prefer to wear a crisper cotton as it feels cooler than a floaty cotton.

For the neck trim I machine-sewed embroidery stitches (on a borrowed machine) onto several layers of linen and then cut between the rows of stitches to give a raggy sort of effect.  I am wondering whether it is time to upgrade my sewing machine.  I have been giving sewing lessons lately and it seems that all my students have better sewing machines than me.

The pattern is from Patrones No. 340 Style 27 Blusa Birger st Mikkelsen.  It has raglan sleeves and a gathered peplum of sorts.  I added several rows of horizontal pleats to shorten the tunic length (an idea I borrowed from Tropical Threads).  I left off the lower sleeve.

I have decided not to renew my subscription to Patrones.  I bought it because it used to have fun summer patterns, including swimwear.  This last summer, it was hard to tell that the summer magazines were any different from other times of year.  And no swimsuits.  The last year seems to have had a gazillion jumpsuit patterns, plenty of shapeless dresses without even a bust dart, millions of blazer and pant patterns that I have little use for and even their blouse patterns seem less likely to have a bust dart than not.  So I did not renew and now I will see whether I miss it or not.  I did like getting a magazine in the mail and my first flick through of each edition was charged with anticipation...only more often than not, followed by disappointment.

On a positive - my blogging is nearly up to date - just one more post tomorrow and I will have finished off the year's posts in a timely manner.