Double Collar Blouse

Last week on Sew Weekly was the Spring Pantone Challenge, where we picked a color from the Spring Pantone series and make up something.

Since aqua/Tiffany blue is my favorite color, you would think that I’d have a lot of clothing in the hue, but I don’t.  So right off the bat, I wanted to make something in “Cockatoo” aka aqua, and I only had one fabric in my closet that was close to the Pantone color.

I may have said it before, and will most likely repeat myself again, but I generally buy fabrics with a specific project in mind.  The pattern I intended for this fabric is Butterick 7592:

The blouse is itty bitty, on the upper left-hand corner.  I picked out this pattern from last year’s Colette Spring Palette Challenge and never got around to making it.  I did make up a muslin and could never get the fit quite right, and as a result the muslin has been sitting on my chair ever since.  Yes…. it’s been sitting on my dining room chair for a year.

Being a bit better at fitting now than I was a year ago, I decided to re-muslin this blouse and use the aqua to make up this little blouse.

As you may see…the fit is still a bit off.  When my arms are down the shoulder seams are tight, but when my arm is bent it’s all good.  Additionally, I need to take in the side seams above my waist and also take deeper tucks in the back bodice.

The back is a  bit billowy:

But I still love this blouse.  :)  I’m intending on making another for the summer, I just need to make a few tweaks.

The pattern’s original collar is the little aqua one, but I thought the blouse needed something “extra” and I added the white collar below it for some depth.  The white collar is exactly 1″ wider than the aqua one.  I actually got the idea from this image I have in my pinterest favs.

One thing I hate is having thick seams on light blouses, or on anything for that matter.  My blouse is a very light weight, drapey cotton and with having 2 collars it would result in having 6 seam allowances, not including interfacing (blouse, collars, plus facing).  My home-grown solution to this is to use silk organza as the undercollar.

I cut a piece of organza the same as my collar piece and stitched them together as if it was the undercollar.  The organza acts as both the undercollar to finish the seams neat and tidy at the edges as well as providing some structure to the collar.  Needless to say my collar is nice and lightweight and no one is the wiser.

One thing that proved difficult on my blouse were the buttonholes.  I spent at least 3 hours sewing buttonholes on my blouse, and they weren’t done by hand either.  heh

I was determined to try out my automatic buttonholer and the first one went ooookay, and all of the rest were disasters.  I gave up on my one buttonholer and tried out my second one and it also was a disaster.  I think they need to be taken into a shop for some repair or greasing.

Check out these beauties!!

What’s that?  You want a detail shot of the horrendous buttonholes!?

That top one is soo bad!  hehe

I gave up and just sewed them using my 4 step machine setting which much better results:

The awesome thing about this blouse is that it’s the first time I’ve sewed on my buttons using my sewing machine.  After taking soo long doing the buttonholes, I was squealing with delight at sewing on buttons via the sewing machine.  The time it took me to sew all 8 buttons probably equaled the time it would have taken me to sew two on by hand.  Sewing buttons on via machine is the best thing ever!

Look!  I’m in pants!  :)

At the moment I only have 1 white skirt which you just wore last week with my blue floral blouse and I didn’t want to wear it yet again.  So I threw on my navy/jean-ish trousers with some navy polka-dot shoes instead.  I’m very mixed-generations here in my 50’s blouse & scarf with my modern pants.

To read more about this blouse and see some different images this is my post on Sew Weekly.

In: Sewing

Blogger for 6 years and counting, I am a passionate creator who loves to tinker.

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