Katey & Laney are well known bloggers and now pattern designers. When they released the Tap Shorts pattern I was really intrigued but decided to wait for spring and some reviews (which there are now many). Then the Geometry Top was released and I took the plunge and bought both PDF patterns. Funnily enough the patterns go really well together and I just happened to pick coordinating fabrics.
First up, the Tap Shorts.
I love that the pattern has a couple of different variations, including a more traditional front fly variation. For my first version I tried front B (open front pleats) with back 2 (welt pockets). I really like the high waisted style but I'm not totally convinced about it on my body. We'll see how I feel after a few wears.
Fabric is leftover from my my most worn Alder shirt dress. A navy rayon blend with silver metallic thread woven through it. It wrinkles terribly but I love the sheen and weight of the fabric. I cut a size 8 which seems to fit perfectly. There is the perfect amount of room at the waist to fit in a summer BBQ.
The pattern instructions were fantastic! Incredibly detailed and pretty much fool proof imo. One of the best tips was to remark your welt placement after sewing the back darts which was absolutely necessary. I ended up sewing only one welt, because why not? The welt instructions were slightly different to what I'm used too but it turned out pretty fantastic thanks to the instructions.
The only changes I made to the pattern was to keep the front pleats sewn down rather then unpicking the basting stitches. I've seen others do this as well. I tried opening them up but there just isn't enough fabric in the front piece to accommodate a nice drape (in my opinion, on my body). The pleats pulled toward my sides despite the shorts fitting me quite well. I also bound the waistband facing rather then folding under and stitched it down by machine.
Now the Geometry Top.
I made version B but sewed the centre front and side pieces together right down to the hem rather than leaving a slit open. I cut a size 6. For the front and sleeves I used a lovely stripey viscose, with a navy remnant for the back ( I think a poly). Both fabrics are from The Cloth Shop, actually the whole outfit is!
The top is quite over-sized and very long, particularly in the back. I ended up hemming the top with a 2" hem to remove some excess. I think over-sized style and the length makes it look like there is just too much fabric in the back. A cropped length might be better suited. Otherwise I like the style and think it looks quite good tucked in. Once again the instructions were very good.
What I don't like about K & Patterns:
K & L Patterns include a different PDF file for each of the variations, however there is a lot of overlap in pattern pieces between versions. This is not a problem, maybe even good news, if you only ever plan on sewing one variation. But I like variety, so I printed 2 different variations of each pattern to begin with as I had plans for both. For the Top I printed Version B to find that 7 pages were superfluous as they'd already been printed, taped together, cut out from version C. For the shorts there were 10(!) repeated pages when I printed out Version C, after already printing Version B. If I had printed all three versions of the short pattern then at least 20 pages would have been wasted.
I think these separate files are a great idea in theory, but actually a bigger waist of paper. The ideal would be to have the pages listed that we could skip if already having printed an earlier variation. How do others feel about all this wasted paper?
Overall, I love my new outfit and I hope to get lots of wear from the separates this summer. I'll definitely make up both patterns again and am particularly impressed with the Tap Shorts. I look forward to seeing what's next from K & L Patterns.
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