the girl from ipanema

the colors of this outfit make me feel very tropical! where's my umbrella drink??

i worked on this blouse veerrry verrry slowly over my blog break. its my third (and final) of the rachel comey patterns i bought back in october, v1170. i'm not really sure why i didn't buy the fourth pattern from her that was available at the time. i think its because i really don't have much use for dresses in all reality. and also because those crazy style lines got totally lost on me in the leopard print. looking at it again, i actually think its quite cute. much more so than the new one - which is a bit unfortunate - but who knows! maybe that one will grow on me too! weirder things have happened...

this is another fabric from tessuti that i bought a while back. its a silk habutai called summer in italy and it was like sewing with butterfly wings. no seriously! this stuff seriously is so delicate and has no weight at all that i'd be holding it in my hands and i seriously couldn't feel it!  its very sheer, and very beautiful, i think. all the edges are  painstakingly hand rolled - which was no small feat because those sleeve ties are veeery curvy! i'll admit that my curved hand rolled hem started out pretty frightful - but by the last tie i got it looking pretty neat. the front of this blouse is cut on the bias, which added an extra element of delicate flimsiness! i was actually thinking of doing a post on my tips for working with extra delicate fabric like this - would anyone be interested?

i'm not going to sugar coat this - this is a bit of a strange blouse. i know a lot of you are on the fence about these rachel comey patterns, and i do understand why. this one was my least favorite of the bunch. its just a bit awkward to wear. there's a lot of fabric in odd places - like the armpits. actually the fullness of this top is controlled by gathers in the underarm which i find a bit strange. i actually played around trying to put pleats and gathers in other areas to reign in some of the fabric but it just made it worse. this top works best the way it was designed.

that being said - i'm actually quite surprised how much i like the way it looks in the pictures! maybe it was just worse in my head? if any of you were tinkering with the idea of sewing this blouse up, here are a few of my tips:

• use a very very flimsy, drapey, droopy fabric (like my beautiful silk habutai!!). when i made my muslin of this top out of cotton it was really truly ugly. like, really. no exaggeration. a fabric with any stiffness will make the drapey bits stand away from your body in a really unflattering way. if silk scares you, something like a cotton voile would work too.
• follow the gathering guides precisely for the underarm gathers. too much gathering and you won't be able to tie your sleeves. too little gathering and you get weirdly saggy armpits. and not in like a cool, dolman sleeve way. trust me.
• fyi - this blouse is loose and boxy. making it from a sheer drapey fabric helps it seem not as much so. but regardless of that, it looks best tucked in.

just some views of the back button placket and the hand rolled hem - which will never see the light of day **sniff**

this top will probably not get a ton of wear. not because i don't like it, because i really do think its a pretty blouse (and it looks great with this oddly colored anthropologie skirt i've had forever and had no idea what to pair it with!) but because its actually very very delicate. between the sheer fabric and the hand sewing i'm a bit afraid that this blouse might not hold up too well with too many washes and wears. so it'll just get paraded out for the more special occasions! no harm with that...

this was the final make from my spring wardrobe. i'm pretty excited to get started on my summer wardrobe - especially since the humidity decided to set in today! hello texas summer! come on in, stay awhile (i know you will)...

xx