Showing posts with label chiffon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label chiffon. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Sheer Summer Blouse!


Cat toy, because cats

Bathroom selfie, of course.
I think Dee was kind of scared when I was making this, and not just of the scraggly way the neckline looked before I added the neckband. She may have been rehearsing how she was going to tell me that there was NO WAY I could wear such a sheer blouse in public.

My sweet wife doesn't understand the Way of the Cami. 

This is Simplicity 1315 in a super-sheer Goodwill Mystery Fabric (that I got for $2). I'm thinking it's a synthetic organza or very light chiffon. It has absolutely no stretch and a light body with a relatively crisp drape. 

I cut the size for my high bust and didn't make any alterations for fit, since the design ease on this is so generous. I French-seamed everything, even the neckband. I simply folded it in half and applied it a lot like a t-shirt band. That made it narrower than the photo from the packet, but I prefer that look.

Hems were a little tricky. I tried to hem the sleeves using my narrow hemmer foot, and it was ok, but there were a few spots where the fabric didn't fold all of the way under. So, I turned it under one more time and did my best. For the lower hem, I made the narrowest turned-under hem that I could. 

To keep the fabric from acting up, I switched out my throat plate for straight stitching and used a straight-stitch foot. I followed everyone's advice and used a completely fresh sewing needle. I don't always do that, but it made sense for this project. 

I machine-washed the fabric on gentle and dried it on low before I started. I will probably handwash and hang the top to dry. The fabric did this weird crinkly thing along the cross-grain when I put it in the dryer and I definitely don't want to have to press all of that out, again. For the record, I hang about 75% of my clothes to dry, but I don't  handwash a lot (except for qiviut socks).

If anyone out there needs an extra reason to try Goodwill as a fabric source: when it's this cheap, you're not afraid of messing up your fabric. You just go for it.