JJ—Finished!

Red JJ blouse---Finished!

This might officially be my first piece of truly wearable home-made clothing. It remains to be seen how much I’ll actually wear it… I’m not usually a blouses kind of girl… but here’s hoping.

All in all… impressed with myself. Or maybe just the pattern. I was half expecting it to come out completely impossible to wear. Instead—a cute little blouse, despite my best efforts to mess things up.

Front view... slight gaping.

Nit-picking (because what fun would it be without nit-picking?):

1) there’s a slight bit of gaping at the front in the bust; it never showed during try-ons because I always had it pinned there, and in fact that’s where I was going to put my top button (there is no button at the collar)… but then when I was measuring my button locations it was easier to move it up an inch (so it was 16 inches above the bottom hem instead of 15) and put a button every four inches. That’s what I get for settling for easy mathematics :P. I can always tack a little snap in there or something if it’s really bugging me.

2) minor oopsie in the buttonhole placement on the sleeves… they’re a tad too far from the end of the band. If you notice this, you’re looking WAY too close.

Back... still a tiny bit loose, but fine.

3) hem a bit ruffly. Actually I’m fairly impressed with how this turned out, considering a) the stretchiness width-wise of my fabric, and b) how much I suck at doing narrow hems on a curve. It is no couture product, but it’s all right.

4) the back could still come in a tiny bit, maybe just a little higher up. but really, no biggie.

The interior seams are completely unfinished, since I was mostly thinking of this project as a muslin. At this point I’ll leave them as they are… if they ravel enough to really bug me I’ll try and zig-zag them at some point. I wish my serger were working.

Looking good!

All in all… pleasantly impressed. The automatic button-hole on the machine worked really nicely (though I’m still VERY glad I did the 4 or 5 test runs it took me to get the settings right. There’s always SOMETHING I forget about when I’m setting it up.