Tutorial: quick and easy blouse

As a disclaimer, the purple fabric was did not look as fabulous in shirt form as I was hoping.  It is a sheer, and I thought it would work just fine, but for this particular pattern, a softer, flowy fabric, like the pink shirt fabric, shown below, is best.  

                         

Finished version of the pink shirt 

close up of detail at neckline 

24 inches is the length of finished shirt.  Use as a reference when cutting your fabric out. 

1.  Fold fabric in half, putting the fold at the shoulders.  Make sure your grain is running lengthwise (up and down) your fabric (this means your fabric should stretch side to side, not up and down) 

2.  Starting from the fold at the top, measure down about 24 inches (I happen to be very long waisted, so maybe measure from the middle of your shoulder down to your hip bone to ensure that your fabric is a good length), and cut a nice rectangle of fabric, with a length of 24 inches, and a width of 18 or so inches (You may want to go a little bigger or smaller depending on your bust and waist size).  

3.  Next cut out the neck tie.  Cut out a rectangle of fabric that is 5 inches wide and 50 inches long

4. Finish the edges for the rectangular neckline bow with a small zigzag stitch. Even after many washings, this should hold up just fine.  

5. Take the fold at the shoulders and cut out a nice neckline, leaving 4 or 5 inches of fold on each side for sleeves.  

6. Finish the side seams with a french seam.  To make the french seams put the wrong sides together, stitch with 1/4 seam allowance leaving a 7 or 8" long arm hole at the top.  Flip the shirt wrong side out, with the rights sides together, and stitch with a 1/2" seam allowance, encasing the 1/4 seam allowance to give a nice professional finish.  

7. Zig zag around the bottom of the shirt and the neckhole (not show), and then fold the neckline bow in half and with the seam allowances all facing the same direction.  You can, at this point, run a long stitch across the length of the bow where it will be attaching to the neckline, , attach the neckline bow to the neckline, leaving a small space of about 1 to 1 1/2 inches so you can tie the two ends together.  

Here is a close-up of the gap between the two ends of the bow.  

Here is the finished neckline

 8.  At the armhole openings, roll the edges twice and stitch all the way around, leaving a small gap about 1/2 inch from the bottom.  I was lazy and left it like this, with a little folded fabric at the bottom where it can fray a little.  You can continue stitching down about 1/2 inch past where the side seam begins and make a sort of 3 sided square at the bottom of the armhole, rotating your needle 90 degrees to stich across the side seams and another 90 degrees back up the back side of the armhole.  Hopefully I have illustrated that in a helpful way in the image below. If you have questions, please feel free to email me!  

And voila! Easy summertime blouse!