Most of the clothes I make are quite structured using “well-behaved” fabrics. I tend to avoid sheer floaty fabrics mainly because they are a nightmare to work with. But when I saw the Taffy Blouse pattern from the Collette Sewing Handbook and a piece of sheer fabric in my stash that shouted “Pick me!”, I decided to take up the challenge.
I knew that cutting the sheer fabric on the bias would be difficult, so I sprayed it with hair spray to try to stabilise it a bit. I think it helped. I used French seams which was the right choice for this kind of fabric and created some strength in the seams with a very neat finish. It does take time though as I needed to pin, sew, trim, pin again, sew again for each seam.
The big, floaty sleeves and neckline are finished with a self made bias binding. And this was a major test of my patience! For starters, I needed to make a lot of binding and then had what felt like metres and metres of fiddling to get the binding neatly sewn on the edges. Luckily I attempted this while on holiday so had minimal distractions and could just immerse myself in the almost meditative task.
Despite the patience required and the frustration of sheer fabric and lots of binding, I am happy with the finished top and I like the way the pink binding colour pops. The neck line is very wide so falls off my shoulders. Maybe it’s supposed to do that but I added little ribbons with poppers to hook around my bra straps.
The Collet Sewing Handbook has some great tutorials and patterns. Tracing out the patterns is a bit tedious and requires lots of concentration to stick to your line. But it was a fun challenge.
Pattern: Taffy Blouse from Collette Sewing Handbook
Fabric: Sheer brown floral from my stash; feels silky but it’s probably polyester
Do it again?: Probably not. I’m not such a glutton for punishment!
Dodgy Zebra 