Remastering My Buttercup Top!
Oh, man- where do I begin?
When I think about my Buttercup Top, I feel all sorts of gratitude. This little blouse was first stitched up way back in 2019, when I was trying to grow my business as a clothing brand. It was actually supposed to be part of a lounge set, but I never nailed down the matching shorts and gave up on them, haha. Long story short, I went back to college and didn’t have much time to work on releasing a collection of Buttercup Tops… until March of 2020. *cue dramatic sting*
Stuck at home, classes on hiatus, and yarn supplies severely backlogged due to the pandemic, I passed the time by writing the pattern for this top, figuring if I couldn’t stock finished items in my shop for people, the least I could do was share how I made it, and maybe that could help them pass time in lockdown too. Little did I know that hitting publish on this design would kickstart my business into what it is today! Seriously, it sounds dramatic, but Buttercup’s pattern was truly a turning point for my life. I’ve received so much love and support for this top over the years, and I am forever grateful every single day for that love.
Now, as much as my heart explodes with appreciation for Buttercup, I have a confession to make- as the years have gone by, I find myself a little, well, self conscious by some of my older patterns. It’s not that I’m not proud of them, because I am! It’s more like I see all the rookie mistakes that come with sharing your first publications, and I tend to fixate on those flaws and think about what I’d do differently. The cool thing about self-publishing stuff on the internet though, is you can do that! So that’s exactly what I did with Buttercup (and what I plan to do with all of my old patterns).
The second Buttercup Top I ever made :’) oh how the time flies!
Over the years, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback for my Buttercup Top- the two biggest issues people had with the original pattern were:
Difficulty understanding the neckline increases
Difficulty controlling the depth of the neckline, with the V-neck becoming far too plunging before being able to achieve the right width (especially for larger sizes)
These were my top priority to get ironed out in my new version, along with streamlining the construction method! If you’re unfamiliar with the original Buttercup, it was made by first making the front right neckline, then the front left neckline, then joining the two pieces together and finishing the front panel as one piece. Next, you had to use the front panel to calculate the number of stitches for the back panel. Wheeeeeew , this feels a little chaotic and complicated , I thought to myself upon rereading the pattern. So, after some trial and error, I came up with a new game plan!
Buttercup version 2.0 now starts with the back panel first. Then you do some simple calculations to make your front panel and neckline based on the parameters of your back panel. This takes out all of the guesswork of trying to make your front panel the right dimensions before having to reverse engineer a back panel- WAY easier to stitch up now! Having the back panel made first means you don’t have to rely on neckline increases to make sure your top is wide enough, which eliminates the problem of Buttercup accidentally being a little too plunging in order to be wide enough.
The original version had you work increases on only one side until reaching the right width for your body, which could get confusing due to the increase repeats happening every third row. In retrospect, I definitely should’ve written the instructions for this section to be a six row repeat instead to give a little extra clarity to increasing only on one side with the shell stitch… but either way, it would have still left the issue of having too deep of a V-neck unsolved. Luckily, changing the pattern to begin with the back panel first also fixed this problem, as it made it so much easier to design a neckline with universal shaping! Basically, what this means is that all sizes have the same shaping instructions, resulting in a universal neckline depth in proportion to the yarn you’re working with, and once again taking the guesswork out of how deep of a V-Neck you’ll end up with.
You can choose if you want your neckline to be the classic Plunge style of the original, or to be a little higher up and more conservative. The Plunge option connects your two front panels after 6 rows of Closed Shell Stitch, whereas the High V connects them in your first row of Closed Shell Stitch. Having that back panel completed first means you get a visual reference of where the V-Neck will sit, and you can choose accordingly to your preferences. Either way, both options look great in my opinion!
Left Side: Plunge V-Neck version, Right side: High V-Neck version
While the front and back panels of this top had a pretty big overhaul, the rest of the pattern is pretty similar to the original version. Though, I did go ahead and change up the formatting so that Buttercup matches the rest of my new patterns aesthetically! This means that the pattern now has an “e-book” style format, complete with a title page, table of contents, introduction and resources section with stitch walkthroughs, step by step photos with lots of tips and tricks, and dedicated customization notes section. I won’t lie, it’s a lot of work to format my patterns in this way, but it’s always so worth it in the end 🙌
A moment of appreciation for that glow up- Just a sneak peek of that brand new format!
So, there you have it! A fan favourite, finally remastered and updated to fit my current pattern writing style and skills. This brand new version of Buttercup is now available on my Etsy shop- if you purchased this design prior to August 25, 2023 and want a copy of Buttercup 2.0, just send me an email with your order number and I’ll send over the copy :)
Happy crocheting!
-Becks
