Unfinished business

I have at least 50 sewing projects in my mind, but nothing new to show you. Instead of fantasizing about what I might sew, but probably won't get around to, I will be terribly organized and show you one of the V7903 blouses from my SWAP that I did not post about earlier, due to some misbehaviour on its part giving me a temporary dislike of the garment. I promise, this is not as dull as the last two.(IMO, anyway)

I was inspired by blouse 120 from the January 2009 BWOF. Link to technical drawing Going back to look at this, I see that it is orange, just like mine, although maybe a little more subdued! I bought the fabric for mine at Gorgeous fabrics, and it arrived rather brighter than I had expected. (Prompting the purchase of a Pantone's guide) Thanks Karla!.
The Burda blouse is made from batiste, and has 4 horizontal tucks. My fabric was rather off grain, like a lot of cotton twills, and my first attempt at making tucks was not successful. I posted about this earlier. My second attempt was made after tearing and tugging at the fabric, and I did not use the Burda pattern, just made tucks in my fabric at a depth that pleased me. After stitching these, I tugged at the fabric again, and cut out the fronts of the V7903 blouse in a single layer, then constructed as previously, as if the fabric was flat.


That last sentence sounds rather easy. Unfortunately I had a bit of trouble with the blouse, and not just cutting holes in the wrong places!. I did not like the front openings after I had applied the facing. They did not sit nicely at the pleats on the turn of fabric. I unpicked, and applied self fabric piping to the front edges, which made things cleaner.
I also had trouble with the collar stand. Due to the fronts overlapping, the point at which the collar stand met the neck of the garment appeared uneven. I was not able to fix this, but tend to think I am being over picky. Burda has avoided this problem by having the horizontal tucks start at a lower point on the blouse. I wish I had looked a little more closely at BWOF's blouse before cutting mine out!
I avoided the button hole issue over the tucks by starting the fastenings below the lowest pleat.


I did add a few details to the blouse. I drafted my own long sleeve, cuff and placket, using the instructions from David Page Coffin's shirtmaking book. I am very pleased with the outcome.

I made another "action back" for this shirt. Instead of a back yoke, I made a deep inverted box pleat, and used some machine embroidery over the top to give those stitches on my machine a little exercise. The embroidery is practically invisible when I wear it,just how I like it.