Well, I’ve been determinedly trying to use my stash, and have made some new blouses.  I don’t have many blouses or shirts in my wardrobe.  I used to in a different life, but I guess with the SAHM thing happening, I’ve preferred knit tops over the years, and RTW ones at that.  However, I have always had plans for this or that top with this or that piece of fabric, and have accumulated numerous tops over the years, all of them in an unmade state.  This top from Burda’s September 2010 issue has seen a lot of versions in my sewing room, but this is the first time I’ve made up the sleeveless one. The fabric is a dotty silk charmeuse.  The first time I made up this top I used a knit, and the fit was very pleasing.  The second version was a woven, and it didn’t fit so well.  In fact, it’s no longer living in my house.  So for this version I measure twice and cut once.  I’m happy with the sleeveless version.  It will be perfect under all the jackets that I have (unmade) in my wardrobe.  However, I didn’t really notice this for my knit version, but the shoulders are very wide – almost dropped.  I had to take out 5 cm or 2 inches of width in the shoulder seam so that the armscye ended where my shoulders began.   

And I made another long sleeved version of this.  The fabric is a silk habotai, and I fell in love with all the colours and purchased this roll end from EOS some time ago.  I wasn’t actually sure what to do with it, or if this pattern could be eked out of the 1.25 metres of fabric that I had.  I did change up the grain.  You’ll notice in the sleeveless version that the crossover is on the bias.  I couldn’t do that with this print because I just didn’t have enough fabric.  I also wanted very much to have the pattern match e.x.a.c.t.l.y., but I’m about 10 cm off on the front because I didn’t have enough of the pattern repeat.  But it’s not too bad, although it’s not perfect, and I think no one will notice unless they look very closely.  The front wraps rather closely because the facing edge is on the straight grain instead of the bias.  The neckline sits higher as a result, but I’m OK with that.  I did manage to have the back encompass one complete motif (there were about 5 to choose from!) and the sleeves are identical, too.

I didn’t take out the drop shoulder as I did for the sleeveless version – I didn’t care about it that much for this blouse.  I widened the sleeves by about 3 inches for the last 20 inches from the sleeve edge.  The bottom 12 inches or so of the sleeve are gathered, and fit very tightly.  This was a problem I remembered from my first woven version, so I added the width this time.  I also left off the ties because they are always in the way, even if you’re just wearing the blouse out for dinner!  They drag through everything.  I used one line of elastic thread and shirred the bottom 18 inches of the sleeves.  This is about 9 inches more than the pattern calls for, but I wanted the gathers to be evenly distributed from my elbow to the wrist instead of all bunched up around my wrist.

I’m pretty pleased with this blouse!  My DH’s opinion: “That’s a LOUD piece of fabric!”