Saturday 5 May 2018

Lily Blouse

This blouse has taken rather longer than it should, sometimes I decide to do something different and then don't know where I am going with it, I don't know if anyone else has that too.  I started this last week then it sort of hung around for a while quite literally because I couldn't decide on the sleeve shape.  I have also really shrunk down what would have been larger pleats front and back to little tucks as I thought it looked too much.  Here is the finished blouse then I will go through the process.

I was going to do short raglan sleeves then went for  capped raglan and to be honest I don't really feel the top gains anything from the different style of sleeve I probably could have just cut the top as a front and back piece with the sleeves included but you have to try these  things to see don't you.
So I began by pinning my fabric to the mannequin to see how it would look, then I added some pleats which then turned to small tucks.  I also cut the shape of the neckline using paper then cut this out from the fabric, lining fabric for stiffness and interfacing.


I then had a play around with different shapes for the sleeves, I finally settled on a  capped raglan which was going to have pleats at the shoulder but it looked too fussy. (old fashioned)
I hand stitched the pleats in place once I had pinned them so that they didn't move about when I removed it from the mannequin.  The sleeves were trimmed to fit and notched at the centre shoulder.

When I had joined my neck pieces together I pinned the front and back pieces to them so I could get an idea how it would look, this was to save on unpicking later but because of this fabric shifting and fraying there was lots of that anyway.

I added a band around each sleeve for a neater finish and because it was a bit flimsy without.  There are belt loop each side, in the photos it is a ribbon tie belt but I have also tried it with a slim patent belt.
I like it now it is finished but there has been a bit of cursing going on under my breath mainly due to the amount of fray!  

The rest of the day has been quite a lazy one as I did not want to miss any of the sunshine, we get a little crazy her in the UK don't we at the first sign of sunshine because who knows how long it will last.  A bank holiday weekend with sun is particularly unusual we opted not to go anywhere as the traffic would have been mad so I just nipped to the shop for beer, to drink in the sun of course. I hope everyone else has been enjoying the weather too. 



4 comments:

  1. Sadly those wonderful temperatures have yet to reach here it is still cool and overcast, the heating is still on.

    ReplyDelete
  2. oh wow.. you made that! That is so amazing.. looks great!

    http://www.henatayeb.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  3. This top looks lovely! The fabric is so pretty.

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