BWOF 10-2008-113B - Teal & brown floral charmeuse top - Wardrobe contest garment #5

Miss me? Yes, this 'simple' collared shirt took me 11 whole days to complete! Early on I felt I'd made a mistake in choosing this pattern. Burda totally leaves you on your own to figure out the sleeve cuffs. Then I had a problem with making the button holes. I began to think the sleeves would turn out too loose and unflattering and lost confidence it would turn out. Whenever this happens to me I have trouble blazing through. I watch TV while I sew and only get a few seams done a night. I do other things instead like knitting or reorganizing my fabrics and patterns. I don't put it aside and make something else, but it takes me f-o-r-e-v-e-r to get it done. Whew! Finally finished! And what do you know but I love the end result! These are the matching pants I'm wearing with it.

This polyester charmeuse is from the JoAnn's Monaco line that I bought back in late spring. Isn't it gorgeous? Charmeuse is definitely not an easy fabric to sew with. It slips and slides, and I can't tell you how many machine needles I went through and still got the occasional pulled thread.

This pattern is extremely small through the hips. I measured the bust and waist before I cut the fabric out, but forgot to do the hips. Thankfully, there is a very large dart through the bodice fronts, and I was able to let that out. However, I wish I had been able to let the back out as well so the bottom side seams were at my actual sides and not a little pulled to the back.

I decided not to use the sleeve tabs because I didn't like the way they looked. If I'd chosen larger buttons they probably would have been fine. But the small 7/16" size just looked odd on the much wider tab. To keep the cuffs from rolling down without the tabs, they were tacked to the sleeve on both front and back vertical seams.

Covered buttons have come a long way in the last few years. They use to make me extremely frustrated. I have thrown a few across the room, then had Justin "help" me. Those suckers were hard to snap together! But these new ones have teeth that grip the fabric and the back simply pops on. Still rather fiddly with this small size but so much better then the old ones. On this blouse I covered the buttons in the same color as the surrounding buttonholes. That way there wasn't a brown button poking through a teal buttonhole.

I left off the top and collar button/buttonhole simply because I don't plan to ever wear it all buttoned up. And speaking of buttonholes, for some reason my machine did not like this fabric. The buttonholes it made were super ugly. I tried everything I could think of and then discovered they looked good on the back side. So I put them in from the wrong side of the button band.

Here is the top of the shoulder where the raglan sleeves come together. I think it's pretty neat looking.

Here's the hem. I was a little leery about these button bands not having interfacing, but they turned out looking fine.

I used french seams throughout. This picture is of the underarm and raglan seam.

Okay, for the sleeve cuffs I had to do some thinking. Burda doesn't even provide a fold line, so I had to experiment. I ended up cutting the sleeve without a hem allowance. My fold line turned out to be 4" from the bottom, so while sewing the sleeve sides, I taper the seams out from 5/8" to about 1/4" at the bottom. These are approximate because I used french seams on the sleeves as well. After ironing a crisp fold line, I turned the very bottom in about 1/2" and then sewed that up to the sleeve arm, stretching it just a bit to fit. Then I turned the cuff up, ironed another crisp fold line, and tacked to the side seams. Does that make sense?


Five down, five to go. Next up is an extra for the contest, a vest. It doesn't go with all the bottoms nor all the tops, so can't be considered the "topper". I think it will be a great addition to this wardrobe so I'm making it anyway. It should be easy, but then you all know my track record with supposedly easy projects. Keep your fingers crossed!