Butterfly blouse – sew long summer

I’m really excited to be blogging as part of the sew long summer tour. I thought I’d challenge myself and do something really different. I fell in love with the decades of style butterfly blouse a while ago so this was the perfect moment. 1930s Butterfly Blouse I also found this beautiful sheer blue grey fabric at the Birmingham rag market for £1 a metre. I’ve never sewed sheer fabric, I’ve never done shirring before and I don’t usually wear blouses so all kinds of challenges.

Here it is done!

I love it and it feels beautiful. Since I usually blog tutorials and this obviously isn’t my pattern I’m not exactly sure what the most helpful things to say are but here goes:

Fit – I’m a uk size 20 at the moment, the biggest size on the pattern (C) is a little smaller than my measurements but I find sizing up often makes things bigger than I like and also more home made looking. So I stuck with size C and the fit is good. The only alteration I made is to the tie – I added about 4 inches to it – I wish I’d added more really.

Shirring – this was easier than I thought and it was really fun to do. Next time I’ll use a smaller stitch to stitch it down and be more precise about the start and end of each row.

Finishing – the pattern calls for bias edging before folding over. Frankly this just sounded like a faff so I overlocked the hems before double turning, you can see in the close up a over it isn’t perfect. But I think a good iron will help (though the fabric is incredibly iron resistant!). I think it worked because there is a decent amount of stretch in the fabric. The bias thing would put me off making it in a woven.

Seams – I know French seams are the thing for sheer fabric. However the machine chewed the seams when I tried to straight stitch them for French seaming. So I just overlocked them. I’m pretty happy with the effect.

It did use a lot of fabric (nearly 3 metres) and left a lot if weird shaped scraps, but oh it was worth it for all that draping!

I think I’ll wear it over dresses as a wrap as well as with a cami top to use as an actual blouse, all in all a very happy sewist!

Sharing the happiness a bit here is a raffle and some discounts from our sponsors:

Raffle Pattern

Fun discounts and coupon codes from our sponsors:
Zierstoff Patterns 20% off patterns Code: zierstoffpatterns20 Ends 9/17/16
Blue Dot Patterns 25% off patterns Code: SewLongSummer Ends 9/17/16
On the Cutting Floor 50% off patterns Code: SEWLONG Ends 9/17/16

Lulu & Celeste, Diane Cullum of Two Chicklets, Adventures With Bubba and Bug, Wining Wife, The Pumpkin Room, Sewing A La Carte, Anne-Mari Sews