Simplicity 2192, The 3-D Sheer Top

Another Cynthia Rowley Simplicity 2192 completed and I am really happy with the results. It was not a difficult project but a very diaphanous, fiddly one.  Sewing with sheers is often like sewing air together. Pins won't stick in unless they are the glass headed silk pins. Cutting requires all sorts of tricks and patience. How about a ton of spray starch and rotary cutting? And the actual sewing requires a really light touch as well. Here's the low down:

Fabric:  As I said, DIAPHANOUS, as in airy, light, pale, and sheer. It is a 100% poly that gave me no grief because of the fiber. It is a sheer georgette with flowers made of scalloped strips of more georgette laid on top in various sizes. It was love at first sight and I had to find something to make up in this. Enter a beach wedding on the sand in Maine in early August. This and some linen pants will be the ensemble. I took this pic outside with the sun shining through. Hope my bra straps don't do the same and I am working on that challenge as we speak.

Pattern: My Tried and True Simplicity 2192 by Cynthia Rowley, a basic tee with a faced hem and faced bateau neckline.  It is simple and lets the fabric do the talking. I did have to make some changes in the construction because of the sheer factor but I just love this pattern and know our relationship is not over yet. 

 

Construction: First off, all seams are french seams, including the armscye seams. The neckline is faced but using a pink poly tulle for the facing. This is not big holed stiff netting but the really fine tulle.  It disappears and let me topstitch the neckline beautifully. You can see how I did that in this post.   The sleeve and bottom hems were done with the Kenneth King tiny hem tute method. This meant I had the challenge of transitioning from the French Seam to the tiny hem. It all worked out fine with a bit of fabric, about a 1/3 of an inch,  from the slash where the techniques met being hand overcast. It blended very nicely after that and a press. Overall, simple but challenging due to the airy nature of the fabric. ETA: Just want to add that this was all cut on the crossgrain to take advantage of the negative space near the selvedge.

I really look forward to wearing this and will show the outfit on when the pants are completed. I have basically this weekend to do the pants so I am down to the cave to clean up from the blouse project and then start cutting those Sure Fit pants out. I am going to do a fly front zip on this one. Lata'......Bunny

 

The 3-D Sheer top a la Cynthia Rowley

 

With this project I need to figure out sheer hems on the  bottom edge and sleeves and also what to do with the neckline edge. The pattern has the neckline faced. A full facing of georgette would have been very distracting on this top so I needed to figure out something else.  I immediately thought of Kenneth King's Tiny Hem tute which you can find in the sidebar of tutes on the right. But Professor King has also recently taught a method of using netting to make hems in 4 ply silks that really intrigued me. While I used netting for one of the samples, it was not the King method. I sampled two techniques. On the top is a facing made with skin colored netting. On the bottom is the KK tiny hem. For the neckline I decided on the net facing. You may see a tiny gridwork in the georgette. That is not the netting. The netting does not show. Since KK's hem has two turns of stitching it was a bit more rigid than the netting method. I wanted a softer edge for the neckline so decided on the net facing. At this point I should change my words. It is actually skin colored tulle from the local chain. 

The first thing I did was carefully iron the tulle and then cut out the facing pieces. They looked identical but aren't so it was necessary to label them with some Frog Tape. To do the seams I simply overlapped the shoulder seam lines on these pieces and stitched across. Stitching a regular seam and pressing it open and having that bulk just seemed a bit more trouble with no gain, so I overlapped them.

I found it easiest to pin the tulle to the top while it sat on the dress form. Then I carefully lifted it off and went to the machine. This was all done while the shoulder seams were stitched but the side seams were still open and unstitched. The neckline was sewn with a 1.5 stitch length and trimmed back to an 1/8th of an inch.

 

The georgette SA was pressed toward the tulle and then folded to the wrong side and pressed. I then stitched the edge to secured down the netting as you can see in the sample I made above. I used a 2.0 stitch length for the topstitching. This gave a really soft finish to the edge. The tulle is ditch stitched by hand to the shoulder seams. It needs no more security than that. 

 You can see the front and back neckline here all completed. 

What is left to do is French seam the sides and sleeves and do the hems. I think I will use KK's method for that so it can be floaty with not tulle attached. .....So close to done!