Dragonfly Blouse

I bought this amazing Dragonfly fabric from the lovely ladies over at Sewalicious when they had a sale on. It’s a lovely thick crepe and I was lucky enough to receive a bit extra as it was the end of the bolt.

I’m still on my never ending hunt for a go to blouse and let me tell you- I haven’t found it in my pattern choice for the blouse, I’m afraid. New Look K6471 came with this month’s Sew Magazine. I don’t subscribe to it so I bought the magazine because I liked the look of the pattern. It is a Raglan sleeve style blouse with two sleeve options and two neckline options. It also has two hem options, straight and with a drop back hem. The drape neckline (View A) looked perfect for this gorgeous drapey fabric so it seemed a match made in heaven.

The fabric isn’t directional so I didn’t have to worry too much about the positioning of the pattern pieces. The neckline needs a very long piece and to accommodate for this I decided to do shorter sleeves. I opted for cutting the sleeves at a three quarter length instead.

Because the sleeves are made to be gathered in to a cuff at the end it meant that the pattern pieces were really wide – to  compensate for this I made a wide (1 inch) hem at the bottom and inserted elastic which was comfortable around my arm. This pulled the fabric in without the need to fashion a cuff piece.

The rest of the garment was pretty easy to construct – I have since tried to Simple Sew Pussy-bow blouse and I much prefer their way of attaching the neckband – this seems a little fiddly. If you are going to try it – I definitely recommend that you press your seam allowances before attaching the neck piece.

My facings (usually officially hated) are starting to become a lot more bearable now I have my overlocker and all my edges are nice and neat. It has made me so much more confident about working with these types of fabrics because I know that it will look neat and not fray.

Now on to the problem – The neckline – as you can probably see is supposed to be drapey and relaxed. However, it did not look right at all; the fabric wasn’t sitting right, I’m not sure whether this was because I didn’t cut well enough along the grainline.

Anyway, I shared this disaster on Instagram and on reflection decided to just fold the neckline in on itself so it was more like a collar. I pressed it in half and sewed it in place. I think and hope you will agree that it is much better like this! I’m still not 100% convinced though, which is annoying when I had such high hopes for this make. What do you think? I have considered unpicking the entire neckline!