The Festive Miramar Tops (With Puffed Sleeves!)

 I finished all my Christmas gifts in record time this year. Everything I was giving was finished by 11 p.m. on December 22nd - more than 2 full days before Christmas! And the majority of the gifts were even wrapped the evening of the 23rd, rather than at 3 a.m. on the 25th!

As impressive as this is (to me at least, based on my past performance) there is one thing I did not get done this year - Christmas dresses. With my work schedule I just couldn't manage to squeeze those in.

So what did I wear on Christmas day? Something red-ish and green. A top I made about a month ago from the Scroop Miramar top pattern - with a fun hack.

Puffed Sleeves!!

Puffed sleeves? Festive colors? Comfy and cute? It really was a pretty ideal Christmas top since I couldn't have my planned for dress.

The Miramar pattern comes with two different sleeve options - short or elbow length straight. So how did these fantastically puffy long sleeves come to be? To explain that I'm going to have to back up to about a week before this top came to be.

One evening I decided I just wanted to make myself a new top. So that is exactly what I did. 

On impulse that evening I grabbed the Miramar top pattern and a mystery knit I picked up at Walmart a couple years ago.

As I was cutting out this top real quick, barely managing to squeeze it into just over a yard of fabric, I decided to widen the elbow length sleeves just a little bit, and cut out a cuff to gather the extra width into.

An hour later I had myself a new top, which I absolutely loved, with slightly puffed sleeves.

And the wheels in my head were turning. If I could make a Miramar top with slightly puffed sleeves, then, given enough fabric, surely I could make a Miramar with long, very puffed, sleeves??

The following week, I picked up a fun paisley 3 yard pre-cut of double-brushed poly from Walmart and did just that.

I cut those sleeves just about as long as I could manage and as full as I thought was practical.

I cut out a cuff, and about an hour later I had another new Miramar top I absolutely loved - this time with very puffed long sleeves!

And that is the story of what I wore for Christmas this year! Merry Christmas All! I hope you had a wonderful, if toned down thanks to the pandemic, celebration of the birth of Christ.