Floral blouse, or: when fabric determines the pattern

Normally, I decide on a garment first, find a likely pattern, and only then seek the fabric for it.  In this instance, though, I looked at the fabric and thought, this can be made interesting.

I had 3 yds of this silk charmeuse, and used some of it to line a jacket.   This remnant - about 1.5 m - is just enough for a long sleeved blouse.
The print, as you see, has some peculiarities - I highlighted one of them with the two orange pins and the ruler. Also, there's only one flower-free border along the selvedge (shown): the chryssies are printed all the way to the selvedge on the other side.

The print has a nice small scale abstract as background. Since I'm not much of a florals type of person, I chose to highlight the flower-free edge in my blouse.  Two widths of the abstract-only edge  along the front, when worn under a jacket, would conceal the flowers completely.

Since the fabric demanded a pattern with a CF seam,  Burda 10-2011-128, which I'd used recently to make three blouses, was an obvious choice.  I'd already altered the Burda pattern at the shoulder and armscye from the dropped shoulder sleeve to a standard set in sleeve. To make this blouse a little different than the other three, I now altered the pattern further:

1. dropped the shoulder seam 4 cm towards the front 

2. added two pleats to the upper front panels at the above seam

3. converted the collar ties to a stand-up collar

4. finished the front neckline with a facing 

5. widened the sleeve and shortened it to bracelet length, finishing it with a 22.5 cm/9" circumference closed cuff (no buttonholes!!!)

Burda pattern at left, my alteration at right.  The green lines at the front and on the collar mark use of the flower-free selvedge. At 1.5 m, there was exactly enough of that selvedge for the two front panels and the collar. The collar is a simple rectangle, folded in half lengthways. 

I find it much easier to alter a successfully used pattern for small variations like these than to hunt for and test an entirely new one that's as likely as not to come with its own set of new size and fit issues.

  

Even though the fabric was narrow, I was able to lay out the pieces in such a way as to preserve a continuous strip along the floral selvedge.  I turned that into a scarf, of course!

And here's the result: a two-tone front...

...and a very chrysanthemum back:

The stand up collar, neck opening, and the chrysanthemums give it a faintly Japanese vibe, which I like a lot.

But under a jacket, we're very serious indeed:

...where the blooms only play peekaboo: 

that is, until you flash'em: 

Both blouse and jacket play nicely with the matching scarf:

Styled with chunky modern silverware to reassure myself that I haven't fallen into a Victorian time warp.

Are we done yet??? It's c-c-c-cold!

A moment like this, when I get to decide on one small item to fit in with my personal style, is what makes sewing so rewarding to me.  

Grey boucle/tweed wardrobe

Today was a beautiful day:  dry and, relatively speaking, warm.  No rain, no snow, temp well above freezing.  Tomorrow, I hear, it'll be quite the contrary.  So I prevailed upon the Hubs to take a few pics of my new grey wardrobe. To wit:

1. Chanel-style jacket, wool bouclé, cotton broadcloth underlining, silk twill lining and trim
2. A-line pleated skirt, wool bouclé, silk organza underlining, bemberg rayon lining
3. Blouse, out of the same silk twill as the jacket's lining and trim
4. Grey bouclé and black ponte top to work with the skirt for a two-piece dress
5. Standard lightweight wool black trousers, made long ago and a beloved wardrobe basic

Jacket:  New Look 6516

My new hair goes very well with this new outfit, doncha think? (...beats being bald....)

With bouclé top and skirt for a very unified look

Methinks the proportions are a bit top heavy. Next time, I'll shorten the jacket by at least 2 inches/5cm!

Skirt: New Look 6511 view D

Unobstructed view

Edge stitching of  the outside  edges of the pleats
 keeps them sharp, while edge stitching of the pleats' inside
prevents them from falling open. 

Front pleats are faced with lining fabric to reduce bulk, otherwise those pleats just wouldn't behave.
 Elsewhere, the fashion fabric is folded up and edgestitched.

With matching silk blouse.  But just look at that chain: the links are so poorly closed that they slip right out of the thread!

Bouclé-ponte top: Go 4001

I went for grey-black-grey-black-grey-black. 

Love this pattern's strong princess lines. And look at the matching sleeve trim!

 Boucle side back with black ponte on either side.

Honey, does this make me look wide in the beam? 

Blouse: Burda 10-2011-128

Half-length sleeves with self-covered buttons. 

Love the belt carriers on the skirt's yoke.   Need new, skinny belt.

From a distance the blouse looks a nice pearly grey.  But actually, it's a very fine print in cool pink and black.  I like how the print size reflects the pink loops of the bouclé.

You have to be pretty close to the garments to spot the pattern: 

If you look closely, you'll note that the rows of pink are not evenly spaced,
but at 1/2" and 1" intervals. I had to remember that when cutting out the pockets,
to match them to the underlying fronts. 

The look with trousers: The slacks are from a very old Burda paper pattern.  I've tweaked them to death so they fit me no matter what, and now I don't dare try any other pattern. 

I will, of course, add to this little wardrobe, at the very least a couple more matching tops.  

Da-da-da-dat's all folks!  

Silk blouses: I'm on a streak!

With three Marfy 1913 tops completed and the second Burda 10-2011-128 now in progress, I'm continuing my blouse-making streak. Very useful, to be sure, as my newest three jackets desperately need coordinates. However, the pleasure of this run is starting to ebb a tad, and I'm hearing something a little different whispering at my subconscious with increasing insistence.  But whoa, I'm getting ahead of myself. To wit, the blouses:

I picked this pattern because it comes with a sewn-on scarf.  Tremendous!  I adore scarves, so this pattern is ideal for me.  

Here it is with the scarf ends tied up.  I shortened the scarf from 140 cm to about 110, because I couldn't see myself with a big bouffant bow under my chin.  No way.  Ever.  

Other than that, I cut a straight 38, raised the centre opening about 3 cm or so, shortened the sleeves ~4 cm to bracelet length, and tamed the slouchy look by shortening the shoulder line by 4 cm plus raising the armscye by 2 cm.   This blouse is unfitted, and could be made more so with the addition of bust darts and a bit of side shaping (it has none whatsoever), but the silk is lightweight and, though this isn't visible in a photo, swirls round the body nicely.  This fabric is the bit of silk jacquard I dyed recently.  It's heaven to touch and even more so to sew, not least because the jacquard weave gives it wonderful resistance to fraying.  Happy me, I have a bit more of it, and am likely to dye it a dark burgundy for another blouse. 

I also love the fact that the front slit finish is created by wide facings that also finish the front neckline and are caught in the shoulder seam.  My current effort of this pattern (once is good, twice is better, right?) is a dark, semi-transparent stretch silk chiffon, and these front facings will add some modesty assurance exactly where it's needed.  

On the Marfy 1913, third time's the charm.  I widened the neckline a touch and lowered the armscyes back to original design, and it fits just exactly as it should. 

The fabric is a whisper-light, smooth silk habotai, which is the plainest weave there is, in a neat abstract that seems to hint at florals without being flowery, in midnight blue and white. Sewing this one was a challenge:  I've been fighting static cling in it far more than any of the others - with the very cold weather, there's no moisture in the air to carry away the charge built up by handling - methinks I should refrain from sewing such light silk unless it's +35C with 90% humidity?! 

Or, how about sewing in the sauna?!

;)

Chocolate love: full version of Marfy 1913

For my second, full-on version of this pattern, I used a remnant of a very dark chocolate brown silk jacquard.

The fabric is beautiful, with a fine zigzag giving it texture and a lovely glow: 

I fiddled with the colour to render it as close to its true shade as I could. 

 The fabric was too narrow to lay the pattern pieces side by side, but there was just enough to lay out them down in opposite directions, possible here as the fabric has a non-directional pattern.

I added a tiny bit of width at the neckline to increase the pleating fullness there. Just because. 

The back opening is faced and finished with a thread chain loop and self-covered button:

I'm surprised by how much the back opening seems to gape open.  The neck band isn't tight.  

I used this opportunity to apply two basic techniques I haven't yet had the opportunity to use:  a self-faced opening treatment (this top has no CB seam), and the self-covered button (yawn, right?).  To make the facing, I made a long skinny rectangle, and sewed it to right side of CB as a long skinny dart, turned to the inside and topstitched.  

Inside view.  Nice, no raw edges finish.

Looking at the outside, I learn a lesson: in order to avoid those corner impressions at the bottom of the opening, give the self facing strip a smoothly rounded curve down there.  Next time, for sure.

Very imperfect:  I'm glad this top is very dark - those facing bumps at the bottom of the openings are invisible in the wearing. 

Based on the floral blue top, I raised the armscye by 1 cm, and it came out a touch tight. Still wearable and not uncomfortable, but noticeable. I attribute this to differences in the fabric:  the crepe is flexible and springy, and I may have stretched the armscye a bit during binding.  On the other hand, this jacquard has all the stretch of a stone bench. Seriously.  It's so rock-solid stable that even bias has only minimal stretch.  I'll have to take fabric characteristics into account more thoughtfully in future.    

I do like this top's high neckline, it works well with my long neck and will suit both collared and collarless jackets.  Though I won't wear it with the rainbow jacket (the colours don't agree), the style, in navy or purple or even red, will be good. 

I love how blue and brown go together.  My mostly-blue keyhole scarf will marry this brown top with the blue jacket:

Now a bit about chocolate, or xocolatl:

In this Mayan painting, the girl at left is holding a hot chocolate drink.

Did you know the cacao bean has been cultivated for about three thousand years?  Hot chocolate is as old as the Mayan civilization. The Maya also sprinkled it on their food like a condiment (think ground parmesan cheese).  Mayan people of Central America still use the traditional methods in demonstrations of the ancient process:

The cacao pod is at lower left; the woman is using a basalt metate (mortar and pestles) to grind the cacao beans (nibs). 

Can you believe the size of the cacao pod!  The cacao beans grow within a fleshy matrix inside. 

Cacao pods feature prominently in Mayan and Aztec art: 

Cacao pods as garment. 

 The Aztecs made their chocolate drink spicy with chili peppers. Yikes!

Hot chocolate appeared in England around 1640:  more than 350 years ago!

Chocolate is not only very good for us, but it also makes snails smarter.  Who knew?!

Burda 12-2008-113 python print blouse

I'd used the 12-2008-113 pattern back when it was new, and made four tops out of silk charmeuse.  They wear beautifully and still look great, in fact are terrific except for the fact that they show wrinkles more than I like. I loathe ironing my clothes (ironing during sewing doesn't count).   As a working person, my morning time is limited, and what little of it I have is preferentially devoted to talking to plants and squirrels or running. So it's not surprising that I shifted my silk allegiance from charmeuse (always fabulous as lining) to types less likely to wrinkle, such as crepe and jacquard.

I got this beefy silk crepe at the beginning of the year (before my Stashbusting pledge) from Emma One Sock. It doesn't wrinkle at all.  And the pattern and colour scheme are fab.  

The pattern repeat is even from selvedge to selvedge. It looks uneven only because a bit of the fabric is folded over along the left edge. 

So gorgeous, in fact, that willy-nilly pattern placement wasn't going to happen.  Since I was aiming to make this top to go along with my recently made blue jacket, I wanted to emphasize the blue pattern details, so I placed the python zigzag at CF and CB.

This is a raglan-sleeved pattern, and the sleeve is made of two pattern pieces: a back and a front.  As I was laying those on the fabric, it occurred to me that I could emphasize the zigzag on the sleeves as well by combining the two pieces into one piece with a curved dart at the top. 

One-piece raglan sleeve keeps pattern details intact.
I lengthened the princess sleeve to full length.
The sleeve hems are lightly shirred with 3 mm elastic.

 That little tweak worked very well.  Fortuitously, the width of the garment is such that the zigzag is also repeated at the side seams, though imperfectly of course, as the above pic shows.  That's what the pattern would likely have looked like on the sleeve if I'd blindly stuck to the two-piece sleeve pattern.  

How do I like the top?  Well enough for not having verified my prior thoughts on it.  The upper back is a little tight when I hunch forward, so I'll try to cure this problem in a future version with either a CB box pleat or widening the outer sleeve a little, or both.  And I ought to have remembered Burda's penchant for low necklines: a bit more of my bony sternum is visible than I care to show. It can and will be camouflaged with a necklace of some sort, but still. The next version's neckline will be 1" higher.  Maybe 1.5" higher. 

Spot the lady cardinal on the birdfeeder over the left shoulder?

Fortunately, I had laid out the pattern pieces carefully and had enough yardage to leave a nice wide strip of selvedge-to-selvedge fabric.  I sewed this into a 45" long tube and now have the perfect ascot to cover up my excessive frontage.  Together, it all looks great under the jacket.

The blue jacket is now nearly wearable, but all my bottoms are in shades of black or grey.  Navy, or something with navy, would be a good idea for a well coordinated outfit.  

Last words?  I'm learning to be more patient with my sewing. I did quite a bit of basting as I went along, and french-seamed the whole lot, even those curved darts at the top of the sleeves, enjoying both the process and the result. Yea! 

Now I need more silk crepe. Did I really say that?! Oops, the wagon is wobbling already!  I-must-resist--I-must-resist...