Easy Breezy Blouse: Sewing with Silk

With the husband out of town, an early-birthday fabric gift card (thanks mom!) and a new sewing book in hand, I set off to create my first silk-blend shirt! Yes, I did.

The blouse is from Brett Bara’s Sewing in a Straight Line.  The pattern calls for 1.5 yards of silk chiffon, and I chose a solid-colored silk-blend from Jo-Ann’s.

I love how this shirt came out, because it is a bit out of my comfort zone as far as things I normally wear. But, it’s not a crazy print, so it still feels “safe.” It can be dressed up, or dressed down. And, it’s true that I only stitched straight lines.

Verdict: Sewing with silk chiffon is not impossible. But it takes a long, long time compared to sewing with quilting cottons. Each pattern edge was joined with a French seam, and each hem was triple hemmed with teeny, tiny 1/8-inch seam allowances. By the time I was down to the very last hem, I think I’d already put in a good 6 hours sewing this top.

Cutting silky fabric straight is pretty tricky, since it’s so slick. The book suggested a snip-and-rip method. Seriously? I was too chicken try this, so I just used my rotary cutter. I did have some pretty uneven edges early in the process, but they smoothed out by the time I trimmed and finished the edges.

Another tricky part of sewing with this fabric was trimming all of the loose threads so close to the finished edges. Every time I rolled a new hem, I had to trim it first. My desk looked like a man had just shaved tiny hairs all over it.

This is me, after 6 hours of sewing. Relieved to be finished with this blouse! Sharing this at: