A draped butterfly shirt and a lot of handsewing {sort of tutorial}

Hope you all have a great weekend! Mine was full of sewing so far, but now I finally have to get started with finishing my last essay EVER! (Sounds more fun than it actually is)

Anyway, I took a couple of days off of uni work to finally start working on all the ideas that came to my mind over the last couple of months and I was pretty busy sewing, painting and crafting (as you probably can tell by the increased frequency of blog posts lately 😛 )

After watching waaaaaaay to many episodes of project runway, I really wanted to do some draping on the stand, nothing too elaborate, just some sleeves or a shirt. Then I found parts of a sheer white shirt, you might remember from my embellished sweater post.

I had thought about making something out of it for a while, but wasn’t really sure what to do with it. After going through my fabric stash I found some remnants of the butterfly chiffon, which you probably recognise since I used it many times before:

The lovely three-layered Petticoat and the chiffon overskirt dress.

(This is so easy, you can do this too! All you need is some drapey fabric and a wide shirt!)

I started loosely draping the fabric and pinning it in place and then chopped off the rest.

   

Chop, chop, chop!

I did all the hemming with a narrow hem foot. It makes it super super easy to get very neat looking, very narrow hems.

Pretty, right?

I then draped everything a bit more carefully, pinning everything in place. 

I folded the fabric over and started handsewing the draping onto the white shirt. That took a while, phew!

Same procedure at the bust line, this time right sides together.

I stitched over the handsewn seam at the bust line after everything was in place, to give the seam a bit more strength. (Some experimenting with ribbon and trim)

I decided to use the same trim I used for the overskirt dress since it matches the butterfly chiffon perfectly.

I stitched it onto the left side of the fabric first to hide the raw edges, then on the right side to cover the stitching. I did not use topstitching, but sew the two trims together by hand with a hidden stitch.

The shirt can be worn two ways:

          

It’s quite big (a size 20) but I like that it’s so flowy and wide, perfect for summer. I might try wearing it with a belt, to cinch it at the waist a bit.

This is how it looks in the back:

The keyhole might be a bit distracting, but is has a lovely golden button and I did not want to remove it 🙂

It’s lovely to wear during these incredibly hot summer days and looks a bit more chic than jersey tank tops.

What did you make over the weekend? I’d love to see!

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