Yet another blouse

In using up my stash, I seem to be gravitating towards shirts. Someone made a comment here not long ago, and their Blogger link led to a blog project called Never too many white shirts. While I've got my own issues, I happen to agree with the idea of "no such thing as too many white shirts". But this one is striped.

First of all, I was rummaging around my sewing room when my husband came by and snapped this picture of me. Silly. The tin man red hat on the far right is the funnel I use to refill my steam iron, perched on the water bottle. On the chair on the left is that gold silk still waiting to be cut. In woodworking, they say "measure twice cut once" and in sewing with expensive fabric, I say "think 20 times, cut once".

I got out ALL my blouse patterns and stared at them. I really liked that Calvin Klein pattern but it is dated with the gathered sleeves. On the other hand, it is a nice pattern and maybe it's not so bad with gathered sleeves. It comes with French cuffs too. I always liked the high neck band and the possibility of flipping the collar like in the photo, with a tiny cummerbund around the neck. That's dated too, I suppose. In the end, I chose the also old but not as dated Vogue 7332 on the right.

My fabric from the stash is quite a few years old now, a polyester (cringe) but with a bit of a texture to it. Bright white with navy and red pin stripes. I recall it being on sale (of course).

I'm making the B view with the stand-up collar. I've made it before so I know it works. I think it'll be a nice addition to my red or navy jackets and skirts.

I took the "risk" of cutting it out on folded double fabric. When I have stripes like this, I will often cut the pieces out one single layer at a time, to make sure nothing gets crooked or doesn't match. However, you can see through the fabric enough that you can see the stripes on the second (bottom) layer, so I straightened everything up properly and used lots and lots of pins to hold everything exactly in place and just cut.

So far so good. I've got the collar on. I think I will end up putting a single row of top stitching along the fronts, as the bands are just facings turned inside and the stitching will make them flatter. I might even sew a second row of stitching down the fronts, to hold the facings in place for the buttons and buttonholes. We shall see.

New blouse and no thread issues

I sanded down the throat plate, held my breath and started sewing. It worked! I made a complete blouse without the thread breaking once. I feel a little embarrassed, having ranted so long about it being the needle hitting the bobbin case. I even heard back from Singer, who wrote that they thought it might be a timing issue. But that was after I finished the blouse, so I'm off to the races, I suppose.

I've had this pattern for a little while but never made it. It's cute. I rummaged through my stash and hauled out this white stuff that I had bought at Darrell's years ago. It is a weave but it feels a little like a knit (it is textured), and it has a fine silver thread that you can glimpse occasionally. It also ravels quite a bit and is one of those fabrics for which you keep your lint brush always at the ready on the ironing board.

I think it might have been a remnant because it was only through clever cutting that I managed to get short sleeves out of the piece I had.

I decided on French seams for the shoulders and side seams, to keep the ravelly ends in. Around the armholes, I trimmed one side (the shirt side) and folded the sleeve-side-seam allowance over to contain the ravelly bits and then sewed that down with a zigzag stitch. Yes, it would be easier if I had a serger! But I don't.

The front bands are sewn across the bottom, right sides together, to make a nice square finish. But instead of hand sewing the band to the wrong or inside, I sewed it first by machine, wrong side to right side, then I sewed the square bottom, right sides together, THEN I folded it over to the RIGHT side of the blouse (the outside) and sewed it by machine with a topstitch.

It's a bit faster that way -- no hand sewing -- and it gives it a professional or maybe commercial look. Anyway, I like it and since I learned to do this with all the jean jacket bands I have sewed, I now do it with all the other bands I sew.

I also used the same technique on the bands that hem the slightly puffy sleeves.

Here is the puffy part of the short sleeve being sewn to the band and you can see how much the fabric ravels. The green thread is there to gather up the puffy part.

I have yet to go get buttons. This is a single button I have in my button box. It has no mates -- too bad because it is just like what I think would go best with this blouse. The silver thread makes the blouse sparkle a tiny bit but silver buttons would be way over the top. This one is a clear plastic button with a flower motif embossed on it and so it "sparkles" just a little bit. Plus, it is a bit bigger around than most of the shirt buttons I normally use and I think that would suit this fabric, since it is textured and not sleek.

Here is the blouse, awaiting my trip to the button store. Cute!