Burda Style #127 04/2018: Floaty Blouse

It is my first almost done piece for my 2019 Capsule Collection. An airy, floaty button down blouse in red viscose batiste. Oh the irony of creating summer clothing when it is 20 degrees outside. Have to keep reminding myself it’s about the long term plan this year, just think of your vacation. The blouse is only almost finished because I am still waiting on my little red buttons to arrive, but I will talk about the pattern anyway.

The first thing I did was make a toile… or two. V1 on the left wasn’t quite as floaty and loose as I wanted around the hips, so I redrafted and added a couple of inches to the front and back bodice pieces, leaving the top yoke alone. I also gave the shoulder a more gentle slope to accommodate my broad shoulders and heavy upper arms. You can see the small adjustments I made to the pattern below.

I find Burda patterns to be a little difficult to work with at times. I would probably only classify myself as an advanced beginner, who is willing to take on a more than she really knows how to accomplish, and Burda is always light on the instructions. If I didn’t know at least a bit about construction this would have been an even more frustrating pattern than it was. There is no suggestion on how to finish the seams where the yoke attaches to the front of the shirt, or with the gusset. Now generally that isn’t an issue, but in both of these cases there isn’t a normal seam allowance because they are acute angles that you have to cut to the point on.

Above, I show you three photos of the acute angle on the yoke that I am talking about. The first is the outside of the blouse, the second the top of the seam, and the third the bottom of the seam inside the blouse. As you can see to create that kind of angle you have to cut straight to the apex of the point.

Burda’s instructions simply say to press downwards. But knowing that I was going to be using a lightweight viscose batiste that frays if you look at it wrong, much less handle it, I was worried about leaving these little cut sections out in the open. So I altered the construction of the blouse. I didn’t attach the lining layer of the yoke at the same time. I pressed the seam up and then hand stitched the lining of the yoke into place sealing in those ends. I also gave the blouse french seams at the side and shoulders and turned over the seam allowances on the gusset where it was not possible to create french seams.

Below Left: hand stitched yoke seam at front facing. Below Right: Underarm gusset, showing folded and stitched seam as well as french side seam.

The batiste is just the right fabric for this design, light and fluid with the softest hand. It will be a joy to wear. I did have quite a bit of trouble with it. Due to it’s soft hand it does pull out of shape very easily. If you look at the shirt front on, you will see that the right side is perfect, smooth and flat. On the left side of the yoke, at that difficult point, you will see a few ripples. These turned out to be impossible to remove entirely. I unpicked and resewed that seam 3 times trying to fix the problem, which I think is a slight warp to the cut piece when I ironed it. I ended up taking apart the shoulder seam and pulling up the outer yoke fabric just a bit to smooth out some of the wrinkles until I got it to a place where I could at least see past the issue.

I’m disappointed that I wasn’t able to make it perfectly, but I did learn a lot. I love the idea of this pattern and am glad that I took the time and extra steps to find better ways to finish the shirt than were suggested in the instructions. I might even try to sew this again in the future if I find I enjoy wearing this version. I would definitely say that this is very much an intermediate level project, not for a beginner. And I think you need to feel comfortable relying on your personal vault of sewing techniques and tricks to finish it well.

I will make sure to post a photo of this summery blouse once my buttons come in and it isn’t snowing outside.