Seeing Stripes

Fall can be a lovely time of year in VA, the  warm temperatures continue without the oppressive humidity of midsummer.  This time of year is the best for flower garden fragrance. I let the autumn blooming clematis scale two stories, to the roof line of our house, just because of it's fragrance.

autumn blooming clematis

 The faintly fruity scent of the osmanthus (sweet olive) tree hidden in the back corner of the property perfumes the whole yard and greets me when I get out of the car after a long day at work.  I love being outdoors this time of year, which make sewing projects slow down a bit.  I did manage to finish a blouse.  It was inspired by a striped blouse on my favorite style blog,  Wendy's Look Book

  To replicate it, I looked for a loose fitting shirt pattern with no darts and shirttail hem. I found one in the Burda Oct 2010 magazine. Pattern 110.  The blouse has a yoke and deep inverted pleat in the back, cut on front facing and two part sleeves.

Burda 10-2010 #110

  The fabric is a printed strip silk from Fabric Mart. I prefer woven stripe fabrics.  With printed stripes there is always the chance the print is off grain.  As this one was; about 1/2 inch from selvage to selvage.  It was small enough I decided to go head and match the stripes even if this caused the garment pieces to be slightly off grain.  The stripes are uneven and the length of fabric had only two repeats of the pattern.  Both the front and back pattern pieces were fabric hogs; the front because of it's cut on facing and the back because of the pleat.  I was able to fit the upper sleeve in the same band of stripes as the bodice pieces so they would match, but there was no extra fabric for the under sleeves.

Layout

   On a whim I decided to cut the under sleeves out of a different  fabric. I love the surprise of it when the blouse is seen from the back.

Yes, it is lace.  I shortened the shirt tail about 2 inches. The majority of the time I will wear this blouse tucked into a skirt or pants and I don’t like having blouses so long I have to stuff the shirttails down the legs of my pants or worry about them showing below the hem of the skirt. Just kidding on the latter situation, I don't wear my skirts that short.  I will also wear it out over jeans. Friday work dress code in the summer is jeans.  I don’t consider it a perk to be able to wear jeans to work. They aren’t as comfortable as a well fitted pair of dress pants. They aren’t always the best look for anyone over the age of 35, and as a coworker of mine said. “I went to college so I wouldn’t have to wear jeans to work.” But everyone comments if you don't wear jeans, so I'll wear them, but with a nice blouse on top.