Midnight Garden - Blouse - Part I

Intro and Current Progress

Yesterday, you got a sneak peak at the blouse due to the tutorial, but I've never blogged about it. The blouse has been the easiest part of the whole ensemble! I showed you the pattern ages ago when I introduced the project, but here it is again, Advance 6893:

I chose this pattern because of the scalloped edges of the neckline and sleeves and because it would work nicely with the suit. I made a muslin, way back in July or August, and it fits beautifully except for having to shortened the neck to waist length by 1". Here's the blouse as it right now, plus a closer shot of the neckline beading (yes, it needs to be pressed, badly!):


Putting the blouse together has been fairly easy. I've only had two major issues with the blouse: finding matching lining and a matching zipper. I could not find matching lining at Jo-ann's, so my husband (poor guy!) stopped at Martin's House of Cloth on his way home from work to look for some. I sent him with a large sample of silk and there wasn't a good match. I didn't want to use white, as it was, well, too white. I went down to Martin's myself last week and found a satin that matched almost perfectly! Here's my tip for the day: do look around the entire fabric store when looking for linings, not just the lining section. There are all sorts of fabrics that make good and interesting linings. (Check out Carolyn's latest corporate chic dress with interesting lining!) The satin is a heavier bridal type, but works nicely to support the silk dupioni fashion fabric. Without the satin, I would have had to underline the silk to get the effect I wanted. I

In the photo below, you can see the beading along the sleeve edge, along with the lining and pick stitching.

As far as the zipper, I couldn't find one to match at all. Coats & Clark has a color called "nugrey" which is just too dark. Other than that, there's white; which of course, I didn't want to use. Solution? Some other type of closure. I settled on covered, beaded buttons. Here's the side opening at this point; tomorrow I will show you how I added and underlap and loops to the existing blouse:

I am in the process of finishing that opening, finishing the buttons (shown below) and sewing them on. If all goes well, that will be done tonight and all the blouse will lack will be it's label.


Parting Shot: 2 degrees above 0 F. That was the temperature here this morning when we boarded the bus for school. Pretty cold, so my children and I have to dress like we're going on an arctic expedition. Thankfully, we only have a few weeks of zero or below zero weather per year. Today was just an unusual day - tomorrow it is supposed to get up to 28 degrees F!