Jalie 3247 - Crop Top Hack

Today I realized I don’t have many cute, easy sporty tops that I can wear without a sports bra. My kids and I have been doing a lot of races recently (3k, 5k, etc.) and I’m often screaming cheering them on from the side lines. No one would ever call me competitive, *cough, cough*. Anyway, sometimes, I have to add an extra “helpful hand” by running the last mile or so with them to “motivate” them. Again, *cough, cough*. (It’s totally legal, these are just fun runs and not for times or anything.) I usually wear running clothing to these events because I do end up in the chute sometimes and run for very short periods of time.  Today I decided I need some more tops for these occasions. Enter Jalie 3247. I’ve made the bottoms before and turned them into a swimsuit.


Today I turned the crop top into this. Underneath is a sports bra. I couldn’t run a marathon with it, but it does nicely for these little short distances.


It covers well in all the right places and the back straps are really comfortable.


Aren’t they colorful? These are leftover scraps from this FunkiFabrics lycra.


Do you see I just happened to have (from NCSM) black sparkle FOE??


Basically I just made a regular and long version of Jalie 3247 and put them together as one. The only really difference is that the band on the bottom of the shelf-bra is not rolled up in the fabric, and is instead just sewn on. I didn’t want a roll of fabric and elastic to show through my outer fabric. Also I wanted to minimize any seams against my skin.


Don’t mind my “octopus legs”. I was keeping them long until I decided how long to make the straps. Since these pictures, I’ve snipped off the extra length.


Here’s how I did it in a nutshell. I cut a short and long front and back. I lengthened the front and back by looking at Jalie 2805 and just eyeballing it.


I put the short version inside and treated them as one when I applied the FOE.



Then you just follow the Jalie directions. Make the ties, fold over the straps to make a casing for the straps to go through, attach the straps to the back of the top. Like I said the only thing I did differently is to attach the red band (bottom of the shelf bra) directly to the lining fabric.


Ta da!!! Do you love it? I love it. I can see many more of these in the future!!!