Finished Project: HotPatterns 1169 Classix Nouveau Refined Peasant Blouse (v2)

Ever since I made my original version of HotPatterns Refined Peasant Blouse last summer, I've been wanting to add another one to my closet. I've been wearing the first version that I made nearly every wash cycle. However, I got a bit hung up on fabric choice for the next version. I absolutely love the cotton double gauze that I used the first time and have been very tempted to make a the second version using the exact same fabric in a different colorway, but that seems kind of boring, doesn't it?

I recently joined the FabricMart Fabricista blogging group, and you'll see me blogging a few projects over there over the next few months. For my first project for them, I wanted to use a pattern that I was fairly comfortable with but choose a fabric that had some "wow factor". I'm a little afraid of sewing with silk (so slippery!), but I felt like making the HP peasant blouse pattern up in a silk fabric would check both of my requirements boxes.

HotPatterns - Refined Peasant Blouse

HP Peasant - back view

I've already reviewed this pattern before, so I won't do an in-depth review in this post, but I will talk a bit about the fabric and construction choices that I made for this version.

Original review/post for the HP Peasant Blouse pattern.

Refined Peasant Blouse - envelope

The fabric that I used was a cranberry-colored silk double georgette. I felt that it would be a good choice for both its drapiness and ability to handle the tons of gathering that's in the neckline for this blouse. On the other hand, like you'd expect from a drapey silk, this fabric was as slippery and wiggly as heck.  I thought about stabilizing it with a starch or a gelatin, but have read enough horror stories online about how difficult it can be to wash those out afterwards that I was wary. (If you have any suggestions for how to stabilize a wiggly silk in a way that washes out easily, I'd love to hear them.)

Surprisingly (to me), the fabric pressed extremely well, and if I made a pressing error, it was also easy to steam the miss-pressing right out of the fabric. I wasn't expecting a fabric as wiggly as this to press as nicely as it did. On top of that, the fabric also raveled less than I had expected.

Here's a closeup view of my gathered neckline:

Refined Peasant Blouse - gathered neckline

I wanted the insides of this blouse to be clean-finished, so I used French seams as my seam finishing method:

French seams

I only made one additional fit alteration to the pattern for this version--I gave myself a little more room in the wrist cuffs because I found them a bit snug on my first version.

Now, in a lesson of how different fabrics behave differently with the same pattern, I had done an FBA (rotated into the neck gathers) for the first version. I didn't necessarily need the additional width that this gave, but I was concerned about the blouse riding up in front if I didn't add extra length there. I think that this alteration worked well in my reasonably-drapey-but-firm cotton double gauze. However, in my super-drapey-not-at-all-firm double georgette, you can see that I'm getting a wrinkle at the bust indicating that there's perhaps too much fabric there.

GOMI-worthy twee pose

Given that I've already altered the master paper pattern, I think I'll be sticking with fabrics with not quite as much drape for future versions--like doing another double gauze version or perhaps a cotton voile or lawn.