More Clothes with Holes

Opacity is so yesterday.

The fabric for this blouse came from Jo-Mar in Philadelphia. A couple of other sewing bloggers bought the same fabric. As I recall, there was more demand than supply. A girl fight nearly broke out about it, complete with scratching and hair pulling. I should have been the bigger person and given it up so others could buy it instead, but, well, that is obviously not who I am.

For those who did buy it, if you have, indeed, made it up and I somehow missed it, please leave a comment telling me where I can see it. I love to see what others do with the same materials.

I mixed it with some lace I had in my stash left over from this dress. I almost never save scraps, but this is a lovely guipure lace that is fantastic to touch and was ruinously expensive, so I saved every bit of it. I attached the lace to the print before I cut out the pattern. I find that it is easier to line things up if I do it in that order.

I used the same pattern that I used for this blouse. I love how the white blouse looks and fits, but those ruffles on the cuffs annoy me to no end, so I don’t wear it much. I wanted another one sans cuff ruffles. To save you clicking, the pattern is from BurdaStyle 9/09.

Back View

Front View

Back detail. I shaped the lace so it would conform to my neck a bit better by snipping the bits holding the motifs together and sewing them together overlapping slightly. The collar is from the lace edge, where one would normally find the selvedge.

out-of-focus photo of cuff detail. It feels so luxurious to have excessive numbers of buttons on my cuffs. Instead of buttonholes, I used a narrow bias tube to make button loops.

Allow me to reminisce about the days when there were garment factories in the US, and also jobbers who sold excess stuff from garment production at unbelievable prices. This bag of buttons, perhaps 200 of them, set me back 50 cents. Of course, I probably purchased them 20 years ago. Sigh.

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