Back in Black

I am sure that's the title of a rock song, but I'm too lazy to go check.

The blouse is awaiting buttons and buttonholes. Despite having two tins of buttons I still hadn't enough plain black shirt buttons to finish the thing.
In the meantime, I've begun testing the BWOF knit top pattern I mentioned last week and my ironing board has got six tops at various stages of construction spread across it. Two undertops from black lycra, one half finished, the other in pieces. Two black stretch lace polo necks, both still in pieces. Two black slinky polo necks, one finished apart from the hems, which I will do with the coverstitch once all six tops are at that stage, the other in pieces.
I had to piece the second undertop to get it out of the tiny fabric remnant I had. In the process I fell even more deeply in love with Elayna the Overlocker. I had her set up to sew four thread overlock on Slinky. I cut one needle thread, turned the selection dial, changed the differential feed and stitch length, all of which took a matter of moments to do, and set off on my practice piece of lycra and lo and behold, perfect flatlock stitch. Flatlocked my seams on the pieced top, turned the dials back, rethreaded the needle, set back off, lo and behold, perfect four thread stitch tensioned to the fabric, even though the fabric was lycra not slinky. After the battles I had with my old overlocker this was just such a breeze.
The polo necks were made by transferring the raised neckline from my self drafted polo neck onto the front piece of the BWOF pattern(the back necklines were exactly the same length on the BWOF and self drafted tops). I used the polo neck I had drafted to go on the self draft top. On Monday I set off on my Slinky adventure. I've not used Slinky before and can now see why it has a reputation for being lively! Nevertheless, I was fairly pleased with the result. The sleeves were a little wide and I am hoping this was just the drapiness of the Slinky that caused this, though its easy enough to alter the sleeve width if required. I've sewn the seams deeper from elbow to wrist on this one and that made the sleeves feel much better. The polo collar was rather scratchy at first but I washed the top with plenty of fabric softener and it came out feeling much nicer. So, I went ahead and cut the second one out.
Hopefully, if all goes to plan and I get some sewing time on Sunday, I should have four black polo neck tops, two undertops and a blouse to show off. Though the latter is dependent on tracking down buttons tomorrow.
This weekend I also need to start on the Marfy muslin for the tailoring course since I want that done before the Stitchers Guild SWAP starts.