Sunday Sew-Day: Send in the Clowns

Sorry for the delay. Rain and/or cloud cover the past couple days has made it difficult to get good photos of this weekend's project. I eventually gave up and took pics inside sans natural light. On the bright side, I got a new gadget - a remote control for my camera! I'm terribly excited about it.

I picked up this blouse at Buffalo Exchange recently, at the same time as last week's thrift score. It was also $4 on the clearance rack.

As disturbing as I find clowns to be, I was strangely drawn to this print with its creepy clowns, juggling ballerinas, unicycling jesters, and prancing ponies.

Originally, I planned to just remove the sleeves and call it a day, but Fate, knowing that simple sleeve removal makes for boring blog fodder, decided to throw me a curve ball. When I got the blouse home, washed it, and hung it up to dry, I noticed a couple stains.

Since I knew the sleeves had to go, off they went!

Then I grabbed a scrap of cream-colored lace salvaged from an old bra. My plan was to create lace cutouts one the yoke and removed the stained portion, but once I cut off the sleeves and realized how easily the fabric frays, I decided to keep the stained fabric underneath - it's not like you'll notice the stains through the lace anyway. I pinned the lace panels in place along the shoulder, collar, buttonband, and armhole.

Then I trimmed the excess lace, folded under the top and bottom edges (as seen on the right-hand side), and sewed them down as close to the folds as possible.

I used my trusty seam ripper to undo the collar stitching.

Then I stuck the lace in there and re-stitched the collar, as well as stitching down the scalloped edge of the lace near the buttonband.

To finish it off, I did a basic two-fold hem on the armholes.

And voila - no more sleeves!

No more stains!

I've styled it with a black pencil skirt (refashioned) and wide black belt (thrifted), as well as my Calvin Klein nude and black wedges (DSW clearance).

Hey, look! A remote!

Perhaps I should have paired my new clown shirt with my clown skirt from a few months ago?