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!