Blouse Pin-tucks

Blouse front with mark tacking

Blouse front with pin tucking and lace

After cutting out the blouse, the first things to tackle were the pin-tucks on the front of the blouse. This is something I had never done before so I made sure to take my time. Since I was working on black fabric  I needed to be careful about my chalk lines and what might show up. I had in my kit, a square of dress-making white chalk (from a previous course) that disappears when you iron it. After a few tests on scrap fabric I discovered that it worked really well (disappeared) on this black fabric well. So I drew on my lines for the pin-tucks carefully using this white chalk. Then I tacked in all the lines with white thread. This way when I went to sew it I could have the white thread as a guide and the chalk would iron out. Although I think this was a successful technique it was difficult to keep the sewing lines straight using only the thread as a guide. Because the stitch was only a simple basting stitch the thread could move quite easily, after doing the first side I discovered that using a guide on the sewing machine and the white thread was a neater approach to creating the pin-tucks. I also made the unfortunate mistake of pressing the pleats the wrong way. Luckily I was able to correct it quite easily and the lace on-top helped it lay flat. I am pleased with how the pin-tucks turned out.