FIRST, A NOTE:

It’s been a long time since you’ve seen a new blog from us. We got caught up in creating our newest book, The Palmer/Pletsch Complete Guide to Fitting. Melissa designed it with a whole new look, which we love. (See the cover at the bottom of this post.) Now we’re working on catching up with everything else, and we have a lot to share. Watch for a series of new blogs over the next several months. Melissa’s life has now taken her in a new direction—doing bespoke tailoring for men and woman through her new business, WATSON ELLIS.  I’m taking on this blog, and inviting guest bloggers to join me. You’ll hear from one of them, Helen Bartley, shown with me above, next week!

THE MAGICAL BLOUSE

This McCall’s Palmer/Pletsch design M6750, also known as “The Three Hour Perfect Shirt,” is the perfect chameleon blouse. It is used in our Craftsy tissue-fitting course and our 2-Day Upper Body Fit Workshop. Yes, it shows 12 darts, of which eight are front and back waist darts and those can be used or eliminated based on your shape or your fabric, whether you will wear it as a shirt or a jacket, or your choice of fabrics—a cotton woven or a sweater knit.

Helen Bartley @seamdivas, my workshop co-instructor, has made this blouse in many looks and she will be a guest blogger and share her creations from the same pattern in our next blog.  This time we used the sleeveless View A because it has the set-in armhole which is nice for sleeveless tops.

We both fell in love with the same rayon Batik. (Actually, I suggested she buy the fabric and do something out of it. Then when I saw what she was doing, I wanted one too! She allowed me to copy!) We do have similar coloring so often buy the same fabrics. We have to check in when we teach workshops together, but we have occasionally showed up in the same pattern and fabric. Funny that no one notices until we mention it!

 

 

We transferred the horizontal bust dart to the hem and this added width to the front, making it very flared and drapey in this rayon batik. Since Helen also did a full bust alteration, the transfer added more width at the bottom than mine, so she took 2” off the bottom at the sides to nothing at the armhole. We also added 2” of width at the bottom hip edge of the back tapering to nothing at the underarm. This gave the back the same flair as the front.

We shortened the blouse front and back by 4”.

Helen used bias binding around the armholes and I used the facings from the pattern.

We both used PerfectFuse Sheer on the upper collar and front facing. Since we sewed horizontal buttonholes, we cut the stable lengthwise grain of the interfacing the direction of the buttonholes to prevent stretch.

 

 

Below is page 162 from The Palmer/Pletsch Complete Guide to Fitting showing you how to transfer darts.

These instructions are from The Palmer/Pletsch Complete Guide to Fitting.