Ode to linen

Hey hey everyone!

Kat here!  Hopefully some of you know me from my last (and first!) BurdaStyle meetup in August or perhaps you’ve stumbled across my blog or maybe you’re like “Kat who?”

Either way, I’m thrilled to start guest posting on the BurdaStyle meetup blog.  This is such a fantastic (and well organized!)  group of super talented Sewistas and I’m honored to share some of my sewing projects with you.

The purpose of my posts will be geared towards the creation of my daily summer wardrobe.  Yes, I’ve got a day job and can’t wear beautiful couture gowns on a daily basis…maybe I need a new job   Fantasy life aside, I need a new summer wardrobe and want to sew the majority of the pieces in it – hence I’ve been doing this for about a month now.

Less talk more sewing!

Today’s project is a pattern I’ve had in my stash for a while now;  Simplicity 3786.    Yeah, I bought this pattern during my peasant blouse phase, BUT, it has a rather nice V-neck sleeveless option – View C (the short sleeved v-neck in the red).

I bought some lovely floral print linen from Potters one afternoon, and thought this would be a great project for it.  I got a whopping 0.9m, but loved it so much  that I paid my $15 and walked out happy (oh, I bought other fabric too…but you’ll have to stay tuned for those ones!).

The fabric was about 150cm wide, and I didn’t really think I’d have enough to make a tunic top, especially with a rather large bite in the top right hand corner from a swatch grab.  So, I chopped off 15cm of length and it fit!  Hallelujah!

I did a fair amount of hand stitching here.  I originally machine stitched (top stitched) the edge of the neck and armhole facings to the linen.  It looked TERRIBLE!  The machine stitching was obviously too harsh for the loosely woven luscious linen I was working with.  It pulled the fabric too much and made ugly ridges.

Realizing this fabric was a delicate flower, I did a blind stitch (or blind hemming stitch) to attach the facings to the outside of the fabric and to do the hem.  If you would like to know how to do this hand stitch, you can see the “Hand Stitches” menu at the top of my blog.

A bit of work, yes, but it gives a lovely finish to the blouse with hardly any stitching showing from the outside.

Okay, okay enough goobly goop…here are the finished pics!

I just love how  it turned out and the hand sewing was totally worth the little bit of  extra effort.

Another one for the 45 degree heat which will be here before you can say “Merry Christmas”!

Cheers all!

Kat

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