This Simplicity Kaliah Ali blouse was made with olive handkerchief linen. I pinstitched the tucks, sleeve pleats, and collar detail. Traditionally pinstitching on this weight of linen is done with a fine thread. By using regular weight thread the stitches became more prominent than the holes, the look I wanted. I felt the darker color of the linen required a heavier hand with the embellishment. I always do lots of samples before committing a technique to my garment.  The collar, hem edges, and sleeve edges are all topstitched. The sleeve caps on this blouse required particular finessing. First I did two rows of machine gathering. These had to both be within the seam allowance to prevent any marking on the fine linen. With a sleeve mitt, I steamed out as much fullness as I could. For the second steaming I pulled the threads a bit more and went on to a ham for more steaming. Before the third steaming a hand basting stitch was run between the two rows of machine stitching and pulled up and steamed out. A lot of fussing but this gave the results you see above.

Because I am a petite I cut back the collar width a third of an inch. I like to cut back all my details to be more in proportion with my size. I also cut back the cap of the sleeve one half inch after reading reviews of this pattern on PR.

Seams are French seams except for the armscyes. Here I stitched the seam and stitched again a fat 1/8th inch away. I trimmed back to this last stitching line and did a fine zigzag to cover the edges. The front bands are hand catch stitched to the interior.

Design changes I made were the pinstitching, cutting the sleeves back to 3/4 length, a look I love, and choosing to NOT stitch across the tucks horizontally.

This blouse is exceptionally comfortable to wear and I don’t mind the wrinkles!

 

 

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