Sew Lisette Portfolio Tunic with Racing Stripes

Remember when I only used to sew clothes for my kids? Yeah, me either.  

So this dress.  I bought this medium weight grey suiting at the fabric store up the street from my work.  It was, like, $8 or something super cheap.  About 2 yards, 54” wide, and I knew immediately when I saw it that it wanted to be a Portfolio tunic.

I had this vague idea of using piping on it after seeing some of the photos in the Sew Lisette Flickr pool, but I was on the fence.  I didn’t want to screw it up, and I’d only used piping once before.  In the end, though, I really wanted to break up that grey without incorporating another fabric, and I had this hot pink piping lying around that was just begging to be used.

That piping turned out LIKE A BAWSE.  I’m so proud of it, if you can’t tell.  

I had intended for this to be a tunic top and not really so much a dress, but then I found these crazy tights and well, to hell with it.  I am, however, anti-flashing-my-ass so I whipped up some of these Colette bloomers to wear underneath.  Maybe I’ll blog about them separately, but you get the idea.  Satiny-black bloomers to hide my butt.  Pretty simple.  And you guys, it’s a free download, so you should snatch it up. Even if you don’t make yourself a ho-dress, you could still wear them as PJs.

I wanted to preserve as much length as possible on this bad boy, so I used some hot pink ribbon I had lying around to hem that sucker. Stroke. Of. Genius.  It gives some stability and weight to the hem and is a funky little detail that only I can see.

I have thoughts about making another Portfolio, with shorter sleeves and actually making it dress-length.  Once you’ve sewn it once, it’s sort of a breeze to do another one.  Simple construction FTW!