The Sewing Duds Rut is over!!

I have been very disappointed with the last few garments I've sewn.  With limited sewing time over the last few months due to our remodel, to make something that ends up in the donate pile when you are finished is even more discouraging!

But - I'm happy to say the Sewing Duds Rut is officially over!  I am lovin' my new blouse!  

This is Vogue 8979.

This garment was part of a recent challenge issued by my local sewing guild group.  We were given two fabrics and had two months to come up with something.  My fabrics were this very pretty greenish linen with a matching 1/4 yard floral piece.  I had been wanting to make this Vogue blouse for awhile a figured I had nothing to lose with this free fabric so decided to give it a whirl!

Things didn't start off to nice with the muslin.  The shoulder was a little to big with a case of gaposis going on. 

The sides were too big and I was sure this too was destined for the garbage can.

However, with a few alterations to the shoulder and side seams, things were looking up!

I am so happy with the finished product.  

I modified the pleats in the front which I think is better. There are 3 pleats on the front panel - 2 small ones and one large one.  The pattern says to sew the two small pleats and then encase those pleats in one large one which made no sense to me.  All of that beautiful pleat work and they want you to hide it - no way.  I decided to reverse mine and the one large pleat is neatly tucked behind the two smaller pleats.  I think it looks much better this way. 

The back has an invisible zipper and two fitting darts.  The fabric is a little wrinkled here, but after a drive into work, this doesn't look too bad for linen!

And if you are wondering where the floral fabric came into play - I used it for the bias binding on the armholes.  I cut the armholes an inch lower on the bottom and about 1.5 inches in on the shoulder.  The original armhole wasn't too flattering so it needed to be modified.

I can't count this fabric towards my stashbustin total, however, the muslin fabric did come from the stash so of course I'm adding that to the total.  The muslin was 1 7/8 yards bringing the YTD total up to 41.375 yards.

Special thanks to my work colleague Andy for snapping the final pics.

Happy sewing everyone!

Star