More sewing chiffon

SO, my sewing with chiffon continues...I'm sewing the button-down blouse pattern by burdastyle. A great little blouse pattern in my opinion, though as with many of the burdastyle magazine patterns, the instructions are fairly minimal so you kind of have to know what you're doing. Even so, this pattern isn't hard at all.

I started with the bust darts and was concerned about being able to see the dart fold through the sheer fabric so wondered if it's possible to French seam a dart, and you know what, it is. A blog I have enjoyed reading for some time, which is written by a professional pattern maker and seamstress called Buzzybeesworld, has some fantastic tutorials and couture sewing tips, and she has a tutorial on sewing a dart with a French seam.

This is probably not the best photo in the world of a French seamed dart, mainly because by its nature, there's not much to see. Which is a good thing, right?

This blouse has neckband sewn first onto the wrong side of the fabric, then flipped over to the right side, the raw edge folded under and top stitched down. I found it helpful to baste around the folded edge of the neckline before tucking under the raw edge and topstitching. The chiffon is so springy and two layers together seem to rub against each other and send you off sewing down different directions than the one you intended to follow, and the basting helped. I wondered whether the basting stitches would mark the fabirc or leave holes in the chiffon once removed, but they did not.

When it came to sewing the long seams (the blouse side seams and the sleeve seams) I found that again my fabric started to twist and it was much more noticeable on these longer seams. Still with my tape on the throat plate of my machine, I also added a layer of tissue paper behind the chiffon when sewing, and this helped tremendously.

In this photo below of the two sleeve seams, the top sleeve seam is twisted and does not lay flat but the bottom sleeve is sewn with the tissue paper behind it, and it is much flatter, straight and smooth. I'm hoping the difference won't be noticeable once I'm wearing the thing, because I just left the twisted sleeve like that...

Removing the tissue paper is easy because it has already been perforated by the needle. Just tear off a strip one side of the stitching, and the remaining side will just pull away cleanly.

Not satisfied with the results I got when following the pattern directions for sewing the sleeve placket, I used Sherry's tutorial for a continuous bound sleeve placket and it was a much tidier and neater result. Other than that, it was all surprisingly straightforward.

The blouse is all finished now. I just need to take some photos and I'll share it with you.