A sari must be worn with a tight blouse to look right – well most of the time.  Tight blouses look bad when they’re ill-fitting; but we all know that.  So, I made a muslin.

The muslin/trial

I see that the center front needs a little more give right at the bust area; therefore, after several options, I chose to re-shape the side seam only on the front pieces, and not even bother with the usual FBA (full bust adjustment).

The adjustments

Addition (in purple) on the side seam

The front side seams were re-shaped by curving the side seams out a little, and coming back to nothing at the bottom (waist) and the top (underarm seam). The back remained untouched.

Front and back get a lowered neckline

The other adjustment was the neckline on both front and back. The front V was deepened about ½ inch and the back neckline was cut into a V-shape. I had to be careful here to not go too deep in the back, wanting to keep it age appropriate and all that. For once, I was careful with not identifying with the young model and her beautiful back. It slowly dawning on me that

Some things that should be pointed out, relative to the previous blouse post:

I re-labeled the sleeve pattern. The deeper side of the sleeve cap is the front and the higher side is the back.

Underlined with organza

(Yep. I used tracing carbon and a tracing wheel to mark the wrong side. No time for thread tacks.)

I changed my mind about underlining with Bemberg rayon, and used silk organza instead. See photo above. Although the brocade is pretty stable to sew, the back of the fabric has long woven threads which may cause difficulties in sewing the seam. Also, the lightweight organza under-layer gives a non-wrinkly, smooth feel to the fabric without beefing it up too much.

This is where the blouse is at, as of writing this post. Next time, the finished blouse. Not much time left for “wear day”.  Yikes.

Wait, don’t stop reading…..

After my last post a lovely reader sent me an e-mail with a link to her own instructions on how to make a sari-blouse pattern with princess seams. I checked it out and you should too. I didn’t download the actual pattern template, but the instructions are extremely clear.  Here’s the link, and while you’re there, there are other posts worth reading.  The website is called SewGuide to Fashion. What is her name, you might ask?  It’s Sarina.

Samina