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.