Tilly & The Buttons Marigold Top Hack

A couple of months ago, I took the opportunity of picking up the Tilly & the Buttons Marigold pattern when it was included as a gift with Mollie Makes magazine. At that point I hadn't yet discovered my newfound love of jumpsuits, but I'd always liked the look of the bodice of the Marigold and for the price of the magazine (which also included some other interesting looking projects), I thought I'd get it to try out a bit of pattern hacking.

The Marigold is a jumpsuit/trouser pattern featuring peg trousers with an elasticated waistband, tapered ankles and slash pockets. The bodice has a sweetheart neckline, bust darts and wide shoulder straps and closes with a side seam invisible zip.

As I said, when I got the pattern I was mainly interested in the bodice and decided to turn it into a top. This was a very simple pattern hack - I simply lengthened the bodice by 6 inches. At the side seams, I followed the slant of the seam line outwards to allow for extra space at the hips.

The bonus of this project is that the fabric that I used is some spotty viscose from Minerva Crafts that I had left over from making my Carrie trousers last year, so I can wear the top with the trousers to create a fake jumpsuit - all the benefits of having a ready-made outfit with the advantage of not feeling like you have to almost get entirely undressed whenever you go to the loo! And the combination actually looks remarkably like the Marigold jumpsuit itself.

The top came together very quickly - without the trousers I found that for me there's no need to have a zip in the side seam which means that is was a nice simple project. The instructions are as detailed as I'm sure we've all come to expect from Tilly's patterns, although it has to be said that in this free magazine version they definitely weren't set out as nicely as they would be in the normal patterns - the limited space meant that the text was smaller/denser and that did make them seem slightly less user-friendly than they otherwise would be.

In terms of sizing, my bust measurement puts me in a size 5 and that seemed like it should be fine when I measured the pattern pieces (the magazine pattern didn't include finished garment measurements, but I assume the regular pattern would). It worked out fine, the only thing I would change if I make another version of this would be to shorten the straps by a centimetre or two. They're pretty much OK on this top, but they have a slight tendency to slip when I'm sitting down in the top in particular.

All in all, I think this is a pretty successful experiment! I really like the shape of the Marigold bodice, and I could definitely seem myself making another of these tops (quite possibly with some more matching Carrie trousers), or perhaps turning it into a elasticated waist dress. Have you tried any pattern hacking recently?