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. 

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