SILK CHIFFON NIGHTMARE BLOUSE FROM HELL

Let it be known that I do not fear working with delicate fabrics. They require more finesse than a brute like me would typically employ, but I know I can force myself to be careful and patient through excessive pinning and sewing slowly. Perfectly doable. Not scary. Even less scary knowing I'm using the same shirt pattern I've used so many times I could make it in my sleep, so I won't talk about it in too much detail to avoid being redundant. Instead, I'm going to spend most of this post grousing about this awful chiffon and what it forced me to do to make it work. Get ready.

Problems began before I even got the fabric. I bought it from Joann when it still listed in the product description that it was 100% cotton. Sheer cotton chiffon with tiny flocked velvet polka dots? Intriguing! Can't get that at my local fabric store. I'd never seen that before. And there's a reason I hadn't: it was a lie. I checked the product listing a few days after I received my order and found that the description changed "cotton" to "silk." Deeply irritating to unexpectedly have to change my laundering methods. I didn't take screenshots — because why would I predict that I would need to in the first place? — so I don't have the evidence to submit a complaint. There's Annoyance #1.

Annoyance #2: It shrinks when you wash it. And not like the expected pre-wash shrinkage. Before washing, it looks like a normal, flat fabric with a plain weave. After, it takes on a crinkly texture along the weft only. It constricts width-wise, so pre-treating my fabric suddenly left me with less fabric to work with and I had to buy more. I tried ironing it back into its original state, but no dice. Wonderful. My project is that much more expensive now. Yeah yeah, I should have bought a swatch and laundered it to see how it would behave. I get it. I have that knowledge now. But weeks ago, how was I supposed to know that this physical change was even a possibility to begin with? Why would I assume that washed fabric could behave like this? I even washed the finished blouse again before wearing and it shrunk more somehow. My head hurts remembering how unhappy I was any time I discovered whatever new thing about this fabric.

Annoyance #3: The shrinking makes the already shifty fabric even less stable and more difficult to cut. To explain: the shrinking isn't literal shrinking because the fabric is just pulling in on itself. It actually makes the fabric stretchy on the horizontal,which could be really cool in the right application and garment! But not for what I wanted to make because I didn't want or need any amount of stretch. I could not for the life of me cut pieces accurate to the pattern; even under tissue paper my rotary cutter just kept pulling the fabric out of shape. I cut a lot off the hem because the unevenness of the two front pieces was just too noticeable and now it's shorter than I'd prefer.

Annoyance #4: It really does not take well to an iron. There's the aforementioned failed attempt to stretch the fabric back and iron it until it was like before washing. And then more generally, it kind of just springs back unaffected whenever you try to press the fabric into a crease. Areas where I interfaced the fabric obviously pressed better, but it was a pain to put it there in the first place. Which brings me to:

Annoyance #5: The fabric's texture makes fusible interfacing completely unfeasible as it will just plain refuse to fuse. Machine basting (without a walking foot, which is something I don't own) makes the chiffon stretch, shift, and sometimes gather or pucker across the interfacing. I eventually turned to spray basting adhesive which worked for the most part, until the chiffon would separate from the interfacing entirely and I'd have to re-stick the pieces and wait for the adhesive to dry again. Sometimes it felt like even hours after application the glue was still wet and sticky, and I could feel it through the sheer chiffon.

Every other point of tedium was bearable because I expected it. I knew I would be sewing most seams twice because French seams are the only acceptable and practical way to finish the raw edges in something so delicate. And of course every seam sewn must be done so with a layer of tissue paper as stabilizer, so that my machine doesn't eat and destroy the material. And then I would need to pick out each little bit of paper stubbornly stuck under the tiny stitches so there's no paper trapped within any Frenchéd seam. And then I would have to sew twelve buttons and matching buttonholes by hand because of that same machine-eating-fabric problem. And then, how do I do the hem when the fabric really doesn't want to cooperate? I dunno, it's not like I can leave it raw, so very messy baby hem it is! You see, looking at all the work in front of me did fill me with a mild dread but that's just having a list of tasks for any project. It's a lot more painful to be caught off-guard by all the other nonsense on top of the stuff you were already prepared to power through.

Alright, enough of me being salty. Let's take a look at the details on the shirt itself, shall we? It's the same as all the other ones, but with the sleeves slashed-and-spread to hell and gathered at the wrist and shoulder for drama and volume. Although, some volume was lost during that second wash. 

I added a gore in the sleeve's main seam for even more volume because I wasn't happy with the amount at the wrist the first time around. The sleeve placket is just a simple strip of binding instead of my regular tower placket, which would look too heavy and structured on a garment this flowy.

Aren't these lead crystal buttons pretty? I found a card of them in my late grandmother's button stash and I've been saving them for the right project. There were only six of them so I went to scour Ebay to find similar ones. Ideally vintage, to maintain the spirit of the ones I dug up. 

My mother pointed out that the Costumakers buttons must be, at the very latest, from 1989 because the card says West Germany. And the Le Chic ones are from the Germany-U.S. Zone, so, 1949?

 

One thing I regret is not putting an interlining in the front button placket. In real life, the little adhesive dots on the interfacing are visible through the sheerness. I remembered to place some plain black cotton voile under the chiffon in all other places where it was appropriate, meaning the collar, collar stand, back yoke, and sleeve cuffs. When it came to the button placket it slipped my mind and I didn't notice because the lighting in my sewing room is pretty bad. In it, you can't tell the difference between one shade of black and another. Imagine my disappointment seeing my blouse in the sun for the first time and immediately identifying exactly where I went wrong and why.

So what's the takeaway here? Order swatches, and wash and dry them before you buy whole yards of fabric and commit to making garments with them? Especially if the fiber content sounds intriguing enough to be dubious? It seems obvious in retrospect and I feel silly about it. I don't even like the garment that I ended up with that much and that certainly doesn't ease the sting. My less self-reflective takeaway that shifts the blame elsewhere is that I need to stop ordering stuff from Joann period because I've been increasingly unimpressed with their quality, selection lately, customer service, and online shopping experience lately. I'll let my unfun experience with this product be the deterrent from unwise spending on mysterious products. "Designer collection" my ass.