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The silk chrysanthemum blouse

As I discussed in my post on “pedestal fabrics” last week, I’ve had a ridiculously gorgeous silver and black chrysanthemum print silk in my stash ever since AllisonC gifted it to me two years ago when I was about to go into hospital.

But I’d brought it out again recently and thought about how I’d best like to wear it and I decided that I love and wear my silk blouses so much (and my birthday blouse in particular!) that I should sew this into a blouse to get the most wear and love out of this “pedestal fabric”!

In this case I chose to use the same pattern as my birthday blouse, Manequim Feb 2011 #158, because it fits great, I love the style, and I knew it worked well with a drapey silk.

You know what? I am so happy I took the plunge and cut into this fabric, because I just adore this blouse!

A silk chrysanthemum Sorbetto blouse

Every now and then I mention a few people from my personal life when they enter into my sewing world for whatever reason, but regular readers will probably recognise the name of “Neighbour Helen” more than most. As a neighbour, close friend, and convenient fashion industry alumni, she’s helped me assess muslins, balance proportions, learn how to rotate darts, and she even drew the amazing illustration for my free ruffled wristlet pattern!

So I was very saddened to hear that she and her husband are moving their barge to France in a few weeks’ time, to travel through the French canals for the foreseeable future (ok, saddened and jealous!). Since it was also her birthday, my gift to her was to make her a silk blouse of her choosing.

She chose the gorgeous chrysanthemum silk that was leftover from my blouse and I even let her try mine on, but she felt my top was too blousy for her and requested a simple shell instead.

So I turned to the new (and free!) Colette Patterns Sorbetto top!

I made a few changes, though – the most obvious is that I eliminated the central pleat (which would have been too busy with the large scale print), and I lengthened hem by 3” as others said this came up short.

Black linen Pietra trousers

I bought the Closet Case Patterns Pietra Pants pattern when it came out last summer, and even had it printed up in A0 shortly after, but only just not got around to sewing it up for myself, and I have no idea how I managed without them this long!

I decided to make them up in a black washed 100% linen from Textile Express (bought at the same time as the yellow ramie for my Cielo Top). My friend was like “linen trousers – in winter??” but this linen is a really nice, hefty weight that is perfectly warm enough for English winters. Absolutely not the thin drapey stuff you’d wear on a tropical holiday!! I’ve been trying to buy more sustainable and/or recycled fabrics and linen is one of the best sustainable fabrics out there. The downside, of course, is that linen = wrinkles! So please forgive that these are wrinkly in the photos purely because I’d been sat at my desk in the office for half a day before we took these!

Three woven shell tops

A few months ago it occurred to me that I had a lot of 1 metre cuts of woven fabrics languishing in my stash and that I’d really like to have a good, basic shell top pattern in my arsenal to turn these into wearable woven tees or tanks to wear with jeans or skirts. So it was excellent timing when Colette Patterns re-released their free Sorbetto pattern, and I thought I’d give it a try.

Manequim August 2011

I’m not sure what I did to deserve this, but this latest issue of Manequim is chock-full of lovely silk blouses! Over the past few months I’ve been wearing my silk blouses all the time – with jeans as often as with skirts! I wear them out to casual weekend outings as much as to the office or dressy dinners, and the blouse I made from the February Manequim (twice!) is my favourite of the lot.

So I foresee quite a few of these making their way into my Fall wardrobe in and around work on some other, bigger projects…

But let’s look at all my picks from this issue!

I really like this lavender sheath dress, especially the little sleeves, but I’d alter the back so it’s not quite so low. I don’t normally wear this colour, but I think it looks really light and fresh on this model, especially considering it’s coming into Spring in Brazil.

This yellow cocktail dress with its angled, pleated bodice and skirt is possibly my favourite dress of this issue. It’s a size too small from me, but there have been enough similar styles in the past that I should be able to mix and match to make it work anyway.

Manequim July 2011

Hooray, the latest issue of the Brazilian pattern magazine, Manequim, has arrived! Even though our seasons are reversed, I’m finding plenty of styles in this issue that work well for English summers, even moreso than Burda magazine, which is aligned with our seasons (though is anyone else excited to see the return of Burda’s designer patterns? There were actually TWO patterns in the July issue that I’m tempted to make. Please oh please let this be the end of Burda’s slump!).

Manequim have started doing a little section at the front where they get a seamstress to help a poor damsel in distress to alter a Manequim pattern from a few months ago to suit their needs. I let out an audible squeal when I saw that this damsel loves my blouse so much she wanted help grading it down to a size 38! The skirt is apparently from an earlier issue, too, but it clearly didn’t make much of an opinion as I can’t recall it.

First off, I really like this blouse and the trousers here – it’s hard to see, but the trousers have a high-waisted band with piping that really reminds me of the waistband on my tuxedo trousers (which are stored safely in a garment bag now while we build our new bedroom and wardrobe). Both are offered in multiple sizes, too.

Manequim June 2011

If you’re reading this and sweating, then you may wish to imagine yourself instead in chilly Rio de Janeiro for the latest instalment of Manequim magazine. Brrrr along with me now…

First up is a rather useful two-page spread on how to customise your accessories with fur. I quite like the idea of adding fur to existing gloves, though the way they’ve added it to a dress here seems strange. Surely it’s better to create a detachable fur collar, a’la this coat tutorial?

I really like the dress on the left, with its cool peplum side panels and the wide, cross back straps:

Lowering the Pedestal

Can we take a moment to talk about “pedestal fabrics”? You know the ones – you saw it in a shop, it was too gorgeous to not buy, but now it’s too gorgeous to cut into? And now that you’ve put it up on that pedestal, it just sits in your stash, making you sigh with its beauty but ashamed that you haven’t used it yet…

I don’t often have this problem, but I have recognised that I’ve done this with a particular silk in my stash, a ridiculously gorgeous silk in a silver and black chrysanthemum print. It was a gift from AllisonC when I was about to go into hospital, and I initially didn’t cut into it because I’d gained some weight from my illness and I didn’t want to waste it on something that wouldn’t fit in a few months.

But I’ve been back to my usual size for a good year now, and it continued to sit in my stash, until I finally cut into it this weekend. It took some doing, but here’s some thoughts that helped me overcome this:

  • In what form will I wear this most? In my case, this was a good 2m of silk, so I kept thinking for ages that it had to be a dress, so I’d use the whole yardage. But then it occurred to me that I don’t often wear my silk dress because it’s so formal, and it’d be a shame to sew this silk only to not wear it very much. I thought about what I wear most often in similar fabrics, and it’s definitely blouses. So even though a blouse won’t use the whole yardage, I’ll wear it much more often than a dress, and I can always make something else with the rest.
  • It doesn’t have to be ground-breaking. You’ve already got fabric you love – that’s half the battle in a successful garment, so you don’t have to do a new, experimental, or technically challenging new pattern to interest you. Use a pattern you already know you love and fits you well, and then you don’t even have to do a muslin, either. Since it’s already a tested pattern, your chances of failure are greatly diminished.