Made By a Fabricista: Silk Peasant Blouse

Hello everyone! My name is Michelle, and I blog about sewing from the Seattle area. I am thrilled to be joining the Fabricistas and want to share my first project with you: a silk peasant blouse:

For this project, I used a pattern that I had previously made and loved--HotPatterns Classix Nouveau Refined Peasant Blouse.

 
For my previous version of this top, I used a cotton double gauze. I've been wearing that version nearly non-stop, so for my second version, I decided to up the ante and use a silk double georgette from Fabric Mart. Fabric Mart is sold out of this particular fabric but does have other colors available: Silk Double Georgette Fabrics.

The pattern itself is a raglan-sleeved blouse with a gathered neckline and a v-neck slit opening. You can see the details a little better when the blouse is lying flat:

Outside of being a bit slippery and wiggly, as silks generally are, this fabric was lovely to work with. That's a LOT of gathering in that neckline, and the silk handled it like a pro. Additionally, it pressed very nicely (I used my steam iron on a medium-high heat setting) and didn't ravel nearly as much as some silks that I've worked with. Amazingly, even though my cat kept insisting on sitting on and kneading the in-process blouse, it didn't even pick up any cat-claw-related runs.

A special fabric like this one deserved a special seam finish, so I used French seams to finish all of the internal seams on this blouse:

The blouse feels lovely to wear--the silk is soft and drapey with just a hint of sheerness. (I am wearing a cami in the modeled photos just to be extra cautious in making sure that it's work-appropriate.)

For fitting alterations, I only did a small FBA (rotated to the neck gathers) and widened the wrist cuff a bit. (The cuff was a bit snug on my original version.) I'm not even sure that I needed the FBA, which I'd made primarily to keep the blouse from riding up in front. However, this silk has such a nice drape that ride-up doesn't seem to be an issue.

I'm happy to be able to add this blouse to my closet. It's nice without being too fancy and wasn't terribly difficult to sew (silk slipperiness aside).

Happy Sewing!
--Michelle
Happily Caffeinated