A Second Stab at the Self-Drafted Blouse (for my Patternmaking class)

OK, so yesterday I swung by the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), where I'm taking a patternmaking class, since my Professor holds office hours on Sundays.

I wanted to ask him a few questions about marking notches and also grab an opportunity to try my silk taffeta blouse on the dress form I've been working with all semester.

Long story short, the blouse had shrunk too much when I washed it and it no longer fit the Size 8 dress form.  I wasn't at all surprised, as the previous day I'd measured the back pattern piece against the blouse and the blouse was more than 1" narrower.  That's a lot of shrinkage.

My professor didn't seem too concerned about it; mine was clearly an innocent mistake, but I didn't want to display my too-tight blouse in class next Wednesday (our final class) so I quickly stitched up another blouse, this time in a cotton-poly blend (up top), a gift from MPB reader, Michael C.  The fabric is a graffiti print with the words "punk" and "counter culture" written all over it.   Not really me but still nice fabric.

Since cotton is super stable and I skipped the French seams and just serged my seam allowances, the blouse went together fast.  This time I just marked the top and bottom and widest center points of my darts with a colored pencil (four dots in all) and called it a day.  They came out just fine -- no stains.

Here's the new blouse, which you may recall has four front and two side darts, two shoulder darts, and four back darts.  Also a shirt collar and bishop sleeves -- all self-drafted.














It's not as glamorous as the first version for sure, but at least it's the right size.

Three cheers for cotton-poly and thank you again for the fabric, Michael C.

Have a great day, everybody!