I love fabrics with sequins, but I don't have tons of opportunities to dress up and wear them for evening. So the idea of pairing a stretch sequin knit fabric with denim to wear to work or a casual event seemed like a natural for me.

Original Post 6/20/14. Update: Fabric back in stock!

I love to look at the "street syle" page in the Sunday New York Times showing average New Yorkers walking everywhere in their fashion garb. Sequins and denim are remarkably common on those pages. 

While taking a few days off recently in Arkansas, I had the chance to make a Eureka Top and a Cortona Shirt. The Eureka Top is my go-to t-shirt these days — comfortable, and easy and fast to make — not a bad combo. I made the Eureka Top in a pretty subdued sequin/mesh fabric and used a charcoal and navy narrow stripe in a bamboo knit as the neck binding and the sleeve bands to tone down the dressy sequins and make it more comfortable around the edges to wear.

The sequin mesh knit fabric was actually easy to sew. The sequins are very small, and I didn't need to remove any of them from the seams in order to stitch. I used polyester thread to sew the seams and finished the seams and edges using three threads on my serger. It was a little noisy, but it sewed just fine. I serged along the raw edge of the hem and simply turned it up, gave it a little hand press (no iron), and topstitched it in place.

My days of wearing the classic Levi's jean jacket are over, but I love the look of a great denim jacket. I think the Cortona Shirt in traditional blue denim fills that void in my wardrobe and mixes with the type of garments that I am now wearing from The Sewing Workshop pattern collection. 

The Cortona Shirt goes together so quickly, too. I love the architectural lines of the back "peplum" that continues into the front darts. And the one-piece collar/stand makes that detail much faster to construct. 

To finish it off, I got into my button stash and found eight vintage buttons. At my age, it's time to get into the collection and allow things to see the light of day. They were just the right touch to work with the patina of the sequin fabric.