Sencha

I wrote about being an obsessive crafter a few months ago and am proving that to still be the case with my latest obsession: Colette sewing patterns. I just finish my second Colette design, Sorbetto, and have now finished pattern number three, the Sencha blouse.

This project was a fun one because it was my first time working with silk. I learned that silk charmeuse is fussy to cut, reasonable to sew with, frays very easily, and doesn't like to be ironed. I would have loved to make my seams more crisp (especially the seam around the neckline), but didn't for fear of melting my fabric. I also learned that you need to use a small, very sharp needle when sewing with silk or else it will snag. Boy did I learn a lot.

I also brushed up on making buttonholes, which is something I vaguely remember doing once upon a time. (I used these two tutorials to refresh my memory on making buttonholes.) Unfortunately, I have no special buttonhole features on my sewing machine so I had to adjust all of the settings on the fly. The buttonholes came out well, though I had to rip out and fix parts of 3 out of the 5 of them. :-\

This blouse was a slow-and-steady project, though at times it was a comedy of errors. I definitely sewed one of the front ties into a seam, which took forever to rip out without damaging the fabric. I also wore this at work for a few hours before realizing that I never finished the bottom hem. Hopefully, now that it's done I can just enjoy wearing it without worrying something else crazy will happen to it!