A double-gauze V9029, with hand-stitching

After a good, quick Linden as a palate-cleaner, I decided to do a good, semi-quick palate cleanser before getting back into anything more complicated. And by this I meant that I made another V9029, this time in a Nani Iro double gauze that I bought last fall (shame on me), and then edge-stitched by hand.

 

Yeah, well, what else was I going to do?

I bought this double gauze last year because the print was so lovely and the cotton was so soft, and I knew it was going to be a shirt, but what kind of shirt? It seemed too floaty to make into something tailored, but loose woven tunics and I are not on speaking terms.

After spending too many hours googling pictures of double gauze shirts, I confirmed that yes, almost every bit of Nani Iro sold becomes either a Grainline Scout tee or a Wiksten Tova. But looking at that sea of Scouts and Tovas, I only had eyes for the one double gauze Simplicity button-up blouse.

So I pulled out my V9029 and sewed it up again, making note of the fitting changes I wrote down on the pattern.

And I had a very Andrea brainstorm.

Because you know it was Embroidery Month, and the fabric print has that lovely hand-painted feel to it, and wouldn’t it look nice with a little hand-stitched touch? Like maybe the edge-stitching done by hand in a matching embroidery floss?

DMC 725 was a perfect match for the marigold yellow in the flowers. One strand of floss in a small needle, and to get the stitches just right, I ran my tracing wheel–hard, without the carbon paper–1/8″ from the finished edges.

It made a lovely straight line with evenly spaced divots that I just followed with the needle, up down up down, all the way around all the pieces needing hand-stitching. It’s not quite perfect, but then for hand-stitching, you don’t want it to be quite perfect. You just want it to be close enough. It made a heavy and long enough stitch that you can see the yellow, but from far away, it just looks like a normal shirt. So just what I wanted.

V9029 is becoming a TNT for me. The sleeves are the right length this time, the collar worked better–a bit on the big side, but no puckers underneath, and it fits fairly well through the body with no gaping and not too much ease. (For me, a successful button-up shirt is a shirt that, if I leave it unbuttoned, will fall naturally to the centre front, and this one does.)

I used the reverse of the double gauze on the under collar and inside of the collar stand, but given that it’s transparent it doesn’t add much contrast value. Still. It is a Thing that I Did.

 

Plus the obligatory back shot:

Look! My Back!

Not bad for fit, eh? So that’s one shirt pattern pretty much nailed.

~~~~~

Photos this time were inspired by those super formal early photography portraits, where no one ever smiled and so everyone looked faintly ridiculous and/or bordering-on-postal.

The chair in the corner was clean for a change; plus, it meant I got to sit down. I like to think that Simba also enjoyed it as another chance to claim a lap as part of his expanding territory, but it’s hard to be sure.