A breton Bronte (and Bardot)

I love the breton or mariner top. When I went to Mont St-Michel 5 years ago, I was determined to get a breton tee from Brittany. I didn't care that it would be ridiculously expensive and cheaply made. It would be a breton tee from Brittany. Sadly, it was not to be. I scoured Paris after that trip, but only found a striped tee in my last week. It wasn't quite what I was looking for: thick knit and short dolman sleeves with white binding and buttons at the shoulders. No matter; I bought it. For five long years that has been my only taste of bretony goodness. Clearly, I needed to rectify the situation.

About a year ago, I finally got over my fear of knits and sailed out to buy some stripy knit fabric. For me, the quintessential breton fabric is thin black or navy stripes against a white background in a thin knit. But it was not to be. For months, I couldn't find any appropriate fabric. Which boggled my mind. I found thin white stripes on black, red on black, green on white, etc. I finally found some at Textiles on King last August. And snatched it up.



This isn't that fabric. I bought it at the same time because at this point I was afraid all the striped fabric would disappear forever if I didn't. This is very thin, smooth, polyester knit. Ironically, I haven't touched the other stuff yet (it's destined for a Renfrew), and for a long time I didn't really know what to do with this one. I didn't want to have two nearly identical Renfrews, so... Bonny tee? Renfrew + cowl? Another Swoon cardigan? I wound up downloading the Jennifer Lauren Bronte last December and cut it out before the winter break. Problem solved. Except for the part where I didn't sew it up for four months.

I finally made it at the beginning of April in time to wear to the Toronto Vintage Society's Mad Men party (although we didn't quite make the party part because the heavy snowfall after a few weeks of clear weather defeated us). I've worn it about twice a week since then, partially because I was looking for an opportunity to properly photograph it, partially because it looks good. I finally took these pictures yesterday at Queen's Quay, which seemed entirely appropriate.

The Bronte is a lovely, yet simple pattern. I only just now noticed there was a sew-along, which is very unlike me -- I'm usually all about doing the sew-alongs, but I missed this. The written instructions are good! I wound up making it more of a boat-neck due to stitching the shoulders in what is probably the wrong place. As with most boat-necks, it's kind of a pain wrt bra straps, but whatever. Next time I make this (because I need to steal the idea copy pay hommage to Andie's red version), I'll follow the sew-along to get the shoulders right.



Behold the almost-completely amazing stripe-matching! You can't see the seam on the sleeve, can you, despite the fact that I'm pushing my armpit into your face! Darn tootin' I'm proud of that. We'll conveniently ignore the fact that, despite my taking extra care when cutting out the pattern, the bottom layer of the fabric shifted somehow so that one side was off on both the front and back; I bunched it up in the armpit where it would be least noticed. Unless I'm sticking my armpit in your face.

For the Mad Men party, I tried to channel Brigitte Bardot. We made it to dinner at the Lakeview, but apparently a month of nearly winter-less weather made us soft, because that's as far as we felt like going. Blizzards in April are the pits.



Can we just take a moment to admire how even the front binding is? I didn't do quite as good a job on the back binding, but that's what long hair is for.

I've managed to wear this top to every food outing we've taken this month. The winner was the DC's brother K's birthday at the Amsterdam Brewhouse. It wasn't quite warm enough to eat outside. Soon.



So now all I have to do is figure out whether my other breton top should be long- or short-sleeved. Decisions, decisions...