Otherwise known as “the blouse that spent the night in the sewing room wastebasket”.  You may be thinking that this is what I do with “wadders”.  Sometimes it is. I have different levels of wadder disposal.  The most extreme being when I give my husband advance notice to be standing in the living room ready to pick up whatever I’m about to throw over the banister. At that point his instructions are to dispose of the offending project in the garage trash can and never EVER speak of it again.

I bought the fabric for this blouse and a coordinating skirt fabric from Vogue Fabrics a couple of years ago. I would describe the blouse fabric as a sheer chiffon with body. It is embroidered with strips of fabric giving it an interesting textures. I cut the blouse pattern in my usual Vogue size 8. I sewed the blouse using French seams as the fabric is somewhat sheer. The pattern includes instructions for sewing French seams.

This blouse has a flattering shape. My fabric does not show the details very well so here is the line drawing from the pattern.

Everything was going well. I was enjoying working on this blouse in the evenings after dinner. I could already see myself wearing the blouse and feeling good in it. I get so attached to a project while working on it. It seems like each piece is exactly what I need at that particular moment and will make my wardrobe complete.

Here’s where the wastebasket comes in. The sleeves were ready to sew in. They looked great. Everything looked great. I had lost most of my sleeve head notches because the fabric frayed just by looking at it. No problem. I can use the plackets to determine where the front/back are. I sewed the sleeves and then serged the seams because I didn’t feel like doing French seams for the armhole seams. It was all working according to plan until I tried on the blouse. The sleeve plackets sat on the front of my wrists. Somehow I got turned around and sewed the left sleeve to the right side and vice versa. Did I mention that I had sewed AND serged the seam with a fabric that frayed like crazy?!!! How could I do such a thing?!!! I’m better than that, right?!!! I should have figured something was wrong when I had more ease in the front than the back. Why oh why do I ignore these signs?!!! After contemplating my options I stuffed the blouse in the wastebasket and went to bed with the coordinating skirt fabric weighing on me.

The next day I figured I had nothing to lose by trying to undo the stitching and removing the sleeves. I would know within minutes if this was going to work. I sat down with two seam rippers* and some good lighting for two hours of picking out stitches. It worked! I sewed the sleeves back in correctly using a 3/8” seam and called it a night. The little voice inside of me kept saying “All you have left are 11 buttonholes and the hem. You should get that done tonight”.  I ignored that voice and figured one more night would be fine. Besides, I wanted to bask in my victory and not risk another goof.

The only change I made to this pattern was to add interfacing to the front placket. The pattern has you turn a front self-facing twice to form the buttonhole placket. My fabric was pretty flimsy so I wanted some extra stability. I buy all of my interfacing from Fashion Sewing Supply. For this project I used the Pro-Sheer Elegance Light interfacing. It worked out great.

It was a very blustery day today making these pictures challenging to take. The bow was flopping everywhere. I was thankful for short hair.

I am very happy with my blouse and so glad I reconsidered its fate. I’ll most likely make this pattern again as it offers a few options and I like the fit very much.

Stay tuned for the coordinating skirt.

*When unpicking seams sewn with my serger I like to use the Ultra-Pro Seam Ripper. It is a scalpel and cuts the thread without pulling on it.

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