Third Armistice Blouse
January 3rd, 2013
Eek! What a terrible photograph. But I’m so tired of this blouse, I don’t care enough to take a better one.
Like my second armistice blouse, this one sticks more closely to the early 20th-century form. It’s sheer grey striped cotton, with tatted purple ombre trim, and purple fagotting. I added a set of tiny tucks over each shoulder, which seems to help with the bagging around the underarms. I also fixed the collar issues suffered by the preceding blouse — mostly. I think I will use a piece of bias self-fabric to bind the curved part of the collar seam so I can clip it instead of madly stretching the allowance to fold and bind itself.
The fabric slipped as I was cutting it out, so I wasn’t able to incorporate the handkerchief hem that I used on the second blouse (you need to do that kind of work along a pulled thread). I think that extra line of embroidery added a lot to the feeling of delicacy, and I plan to be very, very careful cutting out the next edition. Without the handkerchief hem, the center panel also ended up a little too wide. So I whipped up a triple line of tatting and used it to pull in the neckline a bit. I really like the effect it adds, but am not sure I want to add any more work to what is already an incredible time consuming design…
Up next — the fourth (and possibly perfect) armistice blouse. Keep your fingers crossed.