Summery Floral Blouse

While working on this weekend's refashion project, I suddenly had a vision of what I wanted for a different refashion. So as soon as I finished the first, I jumped right into the second without even pausing to take pics of the first one. I got so caught up sewing that I just kept going almost until bedtime last night. Anyway, since I was so excited about this one, I'm going to show it to you first, and the original weekend project can be posted later.

This flowered, polyester skirt set me back a whole $1.50, and as you can see, I'm sucking some major gut to squeeze into it.

Since this print is just so sweet cute and sweet, I thought a little blouse with a Peter Pan collar would be just the thing. I folded the skirt with the side seams together, and laid my go-to tank top pattern along the back seam fold. I decided not to cut the back quite so low as my template, so as to cover my tattoos for work. Then I did the same with my front template along the front center fold.

A couple bust darts were added to the front panel.

I tried something a little different on the side and shoulder seams to encase the raw edges. I pinned them together with wrong sides facing and sewed about 1/4 inch from the edges.

Then I flipped the shirt inside-out, pressed my seams flat, and stitched about 1/4 inch from the previous seam. I even attached the laundering tag to the side seam for future reference too.

With my basic top mostly finished, it was time to tackle the collar. I laid a piece of brown paper bag (hooray, recycling!) underneath the top and traced the back neckline. Then I just drew a nice curve a few inches down for the bottom of my collar. I folded the paper in half side-to-side and trimmed it in places so it would be symmetric.

I created one half of the front collar in much the same way.

Then I traced out my collar pieces from my skirt remnants. I just used a permanent marker (and cut just inside the lines), but if you have a fabric marker, feel free. I cut four front pieces (two mirror image of the other two), and two back pieces.

I attached each set of collar pieces to one another at the shoulder seams, right sides facing.

With those seams pressed flat, I joined the two collars together, right sides facing.

I left a little opening in the top of the back for turning it right-side-out. Then I cut little slits along the inner curves, and cut out little wedges around the outer curves. This will help the curved seams lay flat on the inside of the collar.

Next I flipped it right-side-out and pressed it flat.

I cut a long strip from my remnants to be my neck binding. I laid the collar in place, then placed the binding strips, right side down, on top of it.

With that sewn together, I folded the binding over the edge and stitched it again.

I repeated the process (except without the collar obviously) to finish off the armholes. Long strip sewn the armhole edge, right sides facing...

...then folded over and sewn again.

I gave my bindings a final press, and it was all set!

I feel so prim and proper in this blouse, it's just ridiculous.

Seriously. How sweet are those flowers?