The blouse is the third piece in our capsule wardrobe.

By definition, the blouse is a woven garment that is worn loosely with a front closure.

Today on Fit 2 Stitch, we'll show you how to fit a blouse properly and change the tissue to duplicate our draped changes.

Next, we'll head to the sewing machine where I'll show you great factory methods for sewing that blouse.

We'll develop a clear plan on getting this blouse to be your favorite by changing it up and making it many times in many colors and fabrics.

Today on Fit 2 Stitch.

(gentle electronic music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics Colorado Fabrics Quality Sew and Vac Sew Town, Tulsa Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas Kai Scissors Sew Steady Bennos Buttons All Brands Cynthia's Fine Fabrics and Clutch Nails.

- The woven blouse, as I travel and teach all across the country, is probably the most misunderstood piece of our capsule.

This is the third piece, it's such an important part, that little white blouse, we'll make it over and over again.

The reason I make blouses is really twofold.

Number one, I can choose my fabrics.

When I go out and buy a blouse, so many times it says dry clean only.

I know that blouse doesn't need to be dry cleaned.

Except I can't take the chance, I can't take the risk, 'cause if I don't dry clean it and ruin it, it's my fault, because it said dry clean only.

With fabrics, what I can do is I can wash a test sample, so I always recommend, even with silks, I don't care how fine your fabrics are, take a little swatch, cut two swatches, wash one, compare it back, dry it and compare it back.

Anytime you just throw the whole yardage in the washer and then the dryer, you have to get what comes out, and I would pre-do it.

Then you'll have a better idea.

So that's one reason I make a blouse is because I can control my fabrics and I can control the cleaning, even if I get a really good price on a sale blouse, if it says dry clean only, I pay for that blouse over and over and over.

And then, of course, there's the fit.

And I can do wonderful things with the fit.

We've got two ladies here and we're gonna have this fit down, and I know you're feeling more and more comfortable with fit, I know it because there are really just a few little things missing and we're gonna show you how to do it and how to make that work.

So I'm gonna bring on Jeannie and Cindy again, because of their fitting issues.

They are so similar to so many of yours.

Jeannie tissue we're gonna put here, and then Cindy's we're gonna put over here, and ladies, thank you so much for doing this, we're gonna get blouses!

Yay, yay, yay.

So with our blouse, what comes to mind, why do you wanna make a blouse?

- Um, because in the summertime especially, when you just don't want anything too clingy and stuff and lightweight fabric to stay cool but still be able to cover up your arms from the sun.

- So you're thinking more that summery blouse, sleeveless or short sleeve, you can control the sleeve, that's a good reason.

What about you, Cindy?

- For wearing to the office, for suits and jackets and take your jacket off, you have a nice blouse underneath rather than a knit top.

- And when I say it's misunderstood, what I say to you is a blouse has more ease than any other garment, last time we talked about negative ease in a t-shirt, a blouse actually has more ease and it has less ease than a jacket, which we'll get to later on down the road.

You're the one who has to decide how much ease you want, but what I find is when women sew blouses for themselves, they'll actually make a blouse sleeveless, they'll put the sleeve in, and then they'll say oh, it's too tight, it's too small.

Because they didn't realize that this extra on the side was okay and they need it.

So we're gonna caution that, but with both of these situations, I'm gonna trust that you know what you wanted and you measured something and you knew exactly where it was gonna be, and that's what I would definitely say.

I say go shopping, try on blouses, find something you like.

Women say to me back, "But it never fits."

It doesn't have to fit.

All I want to know is how much circumference you want because everything else we can change.

Circumference at the bust, we can change the armhole, we can do all of those changes, but I've got to have a starting place, and that starting place is the bust, we're gonna use the full bust to do that.

Alright?

Then we're gonna check to make sure that the darts are in the right place and in both cases I don't have any issue with that, I think it's just fine where it is.

Remember, it could even be above.

In recent ready-to-wear, what designers have done is actually put the dart above the bust.

It isn't wrong.

To us old-timers, sometimes we think no, no, no, that's in the wrong place.

As long as it's within that bust circle, which is a three inch radius around the bust point, it's actually considered in the right place, but sometimes if we're in a bad habit or we think it has to be in a certain place, then we think it's wrong.

I'm just gonna leave it where it is, in this particular case.

If you want it lower, you cut the same all the way across, lower it, and we're good to go.

- Okay.

- But we're not okay with gaps.

- No, not at all.

- I always call it the grocery store look, because I can look in one gap and see right through the blouse and out the other side, that's not really what we want.

We want it to be tight, and that's gonna come from two locations.

It's either gonna come from the shoulder seam, and we're gonna pick that up, and remember, it's not the shoulder seam's sole responsibility to do all of the work.

Because I can pick that up and still have some, so we know the rest of the job comes from-- - The side dart.

- The bust dart, good answer.

She knows her darts.

And you can see just as I make that bigger, and that's I think why draping is so good, because it literally just kind of tells us what to do.

If you changed a myriad of other things, you wouldn't get the end result you want, sorry, I'm gonna make that come undone, and so there I have it, once I change it I can bring out that gap.

So I'm just gonna make that dart a little bit larger, and we'll show how to do that on the tissue, and just go ahead and release, relax your arm.

Yeah, there you go.

And then come back and clean this up just a little bit.

Alright, getting rid of those gaps is just a really important thing to do, and I think that when we have the top of our blouse fitting really nicely, the rest of it flows beautifully.

And then I'm gonna check the back.

In a blouse, sometimes especially when you bring it in, you notice the diagonals here.

That is, many times, is what we call a sway back, and just by definition if you just see that you have more fabric than you want at the waist, we're gonna make a horizontal dart.

And that horizontal dart is gonna be the largest at center back, and it's gonna go to nothing at the side.

There we go, we're just gonna taper it, taper it, taper it.

What you'll notice then is because the angles of the blouse are correct, I have a better ability to actually bring the blouse closer into my body.

And that's what we want.

I know it's a funny thing, or a funny word to maybe think about, but you can see now how that can come into her body and really silhouette her body more so than it could just by taking in those darts, because that sway back has been solved.

So if you're looking at the back of a blouse and you have too much fabric back there, number one, take the darts, but number two, try that sway back just to see if that resolves the issue, but everything else you can see looks really, really beautiful.

We're good.

I'm good on that.

Alright, so we'll make the changes to the tissue here in just a minute, Cindy, let's look and see what you've got going.

I want you to notice this sleeve and the kind of extra, is that a fair word-- - It is.

- To say?

Alright, and then I'm gonna show the back here just a little bit.

We again, we don't want this collar to be this low, the neckline, because if I attach a collar onto it, it'll have a tendency to shoot straight up.

That and the fact that she's got a little bit of viewership in there that we don't want, I'm gonna go ahead and just take some scissors and we're gonna make a horizontal.

Now, we did this on the t-shirt, so we were a little bit suspect that she might need it on the blouse, and so look for those signs to say yep, sure enough, we're gonna add that in.

Let the blouse relax.

Especially, it'll pull up on its own right there.

And then I can come along and put this little piece in.

And we did it on the t-shirt and she really liked it, is that a fair statement?

- [Cindy] It is.

- And we have actually made a blouse that Cindy's gonna show us that just really reflects all these changes and it's really beautiful.

Okay, so I'm just gonna put a little piece in there, again, if you're doing this by yourself, don't feel like you can't do it by yourself, you absolutely can do it by yourself.

It's simply a matter of you'll have to take it off, you'll have to make the slit and then put it back on.

I think the most important thing that we have to consider is the knowledge as to how to do it and how to make it correct, and by adding to the neckline in the back, by lowering the neckline in the front, none of those things are going to help give the back the length it needs.

And the length it needs is greater at center back than it is on the sides.

So our little slash will be a dart, and then I can just pull this up, we can see the back of that blouse now.

Actually fits into her body like we want it to, and I think whenever you're doing a blouse, and of course, it's always opinion, I would do darts.

These vertical darts in the front and the back are just beautiful, and they really show off the curves of our back.

So I can come in and I could take those in if I wanted to, but I can do that on the final product, so I wouldn't necessarily worry about doing that on the muslin.

So in this case now, you can see that I can pinch up this and really get a clean, nice line on that shoulder.

Boy, that really does make a difference.

Very nice, very nice, very nice.

And it's not a lot, it's just a little half inch, and I'm gonna increase the size of that dart.

And that will, if you'll notice there's some diagonal wrinkles, they're going, evolving both ways on the side of that bustline, so I'm gonna come in here and, this is always a good idea to baste this seam, that way you can easily get it undone.

And just take it right up to that dart, I can make the, and if you leave the top part right there attached, I can come in and you can see, I can drape that dart until the angles all go away.

And that's how I know how much larger to make that dart.

It's certainly not anything magic in our math or anything, it's just simply what will make that go away.

In this case, that shoulder seam is a little too far back.

And let me just show you that, so that you can see what's going on.

Let me make sure this is pinned.

I think, people say to me over and over, where does the shoulder go, where does the shoulder go?

And there's not a right place for the shoulder.

But how the blouse reacts is what will make that place correct.

And let me just explain that here.

So I've got the back pinned in place, that looks really good.

So notice that when I try to pull this shoulder up, this bone right here, it's behind it.

So it gives me very little influence over the front of this armhole, where if I take and add to the back, I'm just gonna take that away, and leave it in the front, we can, I'm gonna leave that point right here, but I'm just gonna add this and take it away from the front, I get a lot more control over that front seam, and that's what I want, I want it to hang straight from that point.

It looks wonderful.

And then I can just drape this back, and I'll go through all those changes.

And you're gonna go put on your finished blouse.

Thank you ladies, appreciate it.

Okay, so let's go to the tissue, and let's figure out exactly what we changed, where we went, and what's going on.

The collar we're gonna put to the side, because we didn't make any changes on that.

There's only five pieces to the blouse, so I'm just gonna take away the pieces that I didn't even change, that I didn't have anything to do with, this is on Jeannie now, this is the first one, I didn't make any changes to the sleeve, I only made those changes to the front two pieces.

And what I did in this case is I made the dart larger here, and I made the dart larger there.

So I'm just gonna draw it wider.

Whatever addition I took away, so in other words if I added a quarter inch here and a quarter inch here, I made the side seam one half inch shorter.

So I'm gonna add some to the bottom and just blend it into the bottom.

And that way the side seams will still match.

Very simple to do.

Shoulder seam, you know how to adjust that, you know how to drop the armhole, we saw that on another show, and in the backs you have a little bit of a sway back.

So I'm gonna take and measure where it is, how much it is, and on the tissue, I'm gonna make that little fold.

Now keep in mind, it's always your decision that I can make the changes on the blouse, I can sew those changes on the blouse, and I can actually use that blouse muslin as my tissue.

I don't have to go back to the original tissue and change it.

If you do go back to the original tissue, just be very careful of the changes you make, that they're really accurate.

Alright so that's Jeannie, we're gonna put Jeannie aside here for a minute, and let's talk about Cindy.

Again with the front facing, I didn't make any changes.

With the collar I didn't make any changes.

But in this particular case, I did make changes to the dart, and I'm gonna make that a little bit larger and do that the same way, I'll draw that in, again, I'll have to add to the bottom because I've made the side seam shorter.

And I changed the shoulder.

Now, in this case, I added to the back and took away from the front.

Before I did that, I slashed right through the back, and so we're gonna slash there, and again, make sure you're doing it the same amount.

And when I do something like this, I can still put the piece on a fold, just so you all know that, I think that's our big panic is that I can't put it on a straight line.

Just create a straight line, you'll only take a little bit of circumference off right there, not a big deal, don't worry about that.

But here's what I want you to worry about.

I actually moved her shoulder seam forward.

She had enough seam allowance that I actually added to the back, so I'm gonna add a little bit of paper here just to represent what it looked like.

I'll kinda take that away just to make sure no one gets confused.

So I added, and it looked something just like that.

It's actually, the neckline itself did not change, but this became longer.

And when that became longer, this became less, just by that same exact little bit.

So I'm just gonna fold that down, and I'm gonna put a pin there.

When that happens, whenever you're adding to the back and taking away from the front, the sleeve has to be changed.

I can't put the sleeve in the same way it was, and there's nothing to restore, because I'm always a big person who will say just restore the armhole right back to where it was, but in this case I can't, because the armhole takes on a different front and back.

So I'm going to actually, this is the front, this is the back, I'm gonna actually slash all the way down the sleeve, all the way to the bottom, you can still make it short sleeve, you can still whatever, I'm gonna add that same exact amount that I added here, I'm gonna add here.

I'm gonna put a piece of paper behind it, tape it down, and then right in the front, I'm gonna take away.

The amount that I took away from that shoulder seam in the front, I'm gonna take it away here.

Now keep in mind that this portion of the sleeve and this portion of the armhole are what go together.

And from the notch to the top, and from the notch to the top, those parts of the sleeve and the armhole align.

So as long as I slash anywhere between the top dot and the notch, that, when I spread it will work, and then as long as I take away so that this part of the sleeve will be longer, the dot naturally gets moved forward.

You can't just take the dot and move it forward, that does not work.

I have to actually let it happen by slashing and then taking away in those respective places.

So we've done all that work, the tissue work is all done, the next part is the most fun part of all, and we're gonna see the finished blouse.

So I'm gonna bring Cindy on and let her see that blouse, 'cause there's a few things I want to point out to you.

And this blouse is just beautiful.

- Thank you.

- It's really, really beautiful.

A couple things I want you to notice about it is the extra ease that's there.

That's normal, that's natural, does it feel small?

- No, it doesn't.

- It doesn't, it just looks beautiful on.

The, the sleeve has always what we call a twist.

That is not a negative.

A one piece sleeve, which is what's typically used in a blouse, and the reason it's used in a blouse is because a blouse is lightweight fabric, it's silk, it's any of those things.

And when I put on a one piece sleeve on a bent arm, the wrist as it pulls forward will twist the rest of the sleeve up.

But again, blouses are lighter fabrics and that twist is naturally going to happen.

If I don't want that to happen, there's things that have been done in more contemporary garments to prevent that.

I can come in with a two piece sleeve, which we'll talk about when we get into jackets, or I can actually put a little dart at the elbow.

We'll see that some of our blouses now have that, and what that does is it changes the angle of the sleeve, the same as the arm changes.

But keep in mind that that twist is normal, natural, it's just part of a blouse and I want you to ignore it and accept that it's part of the blouse.

I'm gonna turn her to the back.

I love the shaping in the back of that blouse and look at that beautiful collar.

It just goes right into her head as it should and not stick straight up to the sky, and that was really the result when we didn't have that fullness in the back and when it was just too tight.

And it doesn't pull forward.

- [Cindy] It doesn't.

- Oh my gosh, love it, love it, love it, I think it's just beautiful, beautiful on you, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Thank you for going through the process.

Alright, so we've got that fit down, and because we've got that down, now we really want to utilize our blouse, and there's a couple things I want to show you.

Being in ready-to-wear for enough years, I've got some tips that I find to be really, really fun when I'm making a blouse.

Let's first talk about the front facing.

And before we go there, I want to look at some examples of different blouses that we can look at and learn from.

So this very first blouse, you can see I've got this beautiful trim going down the front.

And notice it's on both sides of the front facing.

So in this one, same thing.

That front facing is extremely powerful, because when I have that front facing, I really can use a border print, I can do all kinds of great things with the trim of the blouse in creating a focal point and all of the other things that I like to do with my blouses.

What I love about this one is you notice, I've got a little bit of piping there on just the collar, so again, as I do my sewing, I can add it where I want it, I can make the focus where I want it, this particular blouse has a lace back.

It's so beautiful, it's just so subliminal that I just think it's fun to mix and match those fabrics.

But let's go and look at that front facing and see how I can do it in every single blouse that I know how to do.

Alright, so when I have my blouse front, it just looks flat like that, my facing pattern itself is going to be equal.

So I'll trace the neck edge, I'll trace the shoulder edge, but I'm gonna add, if you can see, the width that I want that front band to be and then a seam allowance.

I'm gonna add that much on to the extension of the blouse.

And the reason I'm gonna do that is I'm actually going to press the seam allowance under, I'm gonna make two folds, seam allowance under, seam allowance under again, and then I'm gonna make, that makes just a little envelope for that blouse front to go into.

And the reason I do that is this is the fun part where I bring any kind of little piping and I just put it right underneath that front tab.

So you can see that I can sew in the front tab and sew in the front piping both at the same time.

When I've done that to both sides, once they close together, that's when I create that piping right down the front.

What will hold the piping in place is these two rows of stitching that go up, and then of course the blouse front is faced and when it's open like that, you see the right side of the fabric, not the wrong side of the fabric, and that just works great.

In men's shirting, it's done very differently, because most of men's shirting, both sides are usable.

But in women's blouses, most of the time we have a right side and a wrong side.

So the front facing actually has to go up to the shoulder so that once it's worn open, I can see the right side of the fabric.

Alright, let's hit the sewing machine and get a couple tips on blouses.

The first thing I wanna focus on is the collar.

And with a collar, I'm gonna put right sides together, we're just gonna do a couple little different things with sewing.

Remember what I always wanna do is cross my stitches.

So when I start to sew, when I get to this internal point, I'm gonna actually leave the needle down, whenever you're internal leave it down, and then turn.

But, once you come to that point, don't leave the needle down, go ahead and take it out and then change directions.

And what we wanna do is just, we wanna cross those stitches.

That's gonna do two things for me.

It's gonna actually make my stitching more accurate, and it's going to give me fold lines.

And my fold lines, this is the best.

Notice it's just a really sharp point, we call that an acute angle, it's just tight, it's less than 90 degrees.

So I'm gonna fold, I'm gonna fold, and I'm gonna fold.

And when I take that to the inside, I get these nice beautiful points that you wouldn't do it any other way.

Do not clip that corner, don't trim that corner, if you do, then you won't have the nice layers in there, and that's where it's hard to topstitch, because your sewing machine kind of sinks into those holes and you can't get out, is really what happens.

So you're gonna do that on both corners and create that beautiful pressed collar, and then I'm just gonna press the seam allowance under on the neck edge.

Then if you'll notice, this is a blouse that's already been done, if you look at a blouse and you can run your thumbnail under there, it's what we call edge stitching.

It's used a lot in ready-to-wear, it's probably one of my favorite methods to use because it's used so much.

But all I'm gonna do is open up this little envelope called a collar, and I'm gonna put my blouse in there and I'm gonna shove up all the ugly parts in there and I'm gonna just put it as close as I can.

And if you'll ever notice a blouse that you buy in ready-to-wear, there's like a little knob right there, and that little knob is a good thing, it makes it look not homemade, and so we don't want to do right sides together and flip it over and topstitch, just because it looks homemade.

Remember it's your blouse, you get to do it any way you want, not telling you what to do, but I am gonna tell you that of all the factories I've ever been in, this is the way they do it, and it's called edge-stitching a blouse on.

And that's the only stitch that holds the whole entire collar onto that blouse.

So it's easy, it's quick, just line up the two fronts and then sew the collar in between.

And it's just a real easy transition going from the edge stitching to the rest of the blouse.

So now you have it.

You have everything I know, every way to make a blouse.

Should take you about an hour.

Alright.

And jean jackets, by the way, are not just made from denim.

Net time on Fit 2 Stitch, we'll show you how this jacket transcends all ages.

Join us as we fit and sew today's jean jacket.

(gentle piano music) - [Announcer] Fit 2 Stitch is made possible by Vogue Fabrics Colorado Fabrics Quality Sew and Vac Sew Town, Tulsa Oklahoma and Fort Smith, Arkansas Kai Scissors Sew Steady Bennos Buttons All Brands Cynthia's Fine Fabrics and Clutch Nails.

To order a four DVD set of Fit 2 Stitch series seven, please visit our website at fit2stitch.com.