"Easy" Chiffon Tunic

Last week at church I saw a a lady wearing a lovely, floaty, black chiffon tunic with rolled up sleeves held in place with buttoned tabs. She looked so classy and cool, I was immediately enamored and wanted to make my own. I still had quite a bit of black chiffon left over from my Girl on Fire dress, so I decided to give it a try. Um, yeah, totally distracted from my knit stashbusting quest. Forgive me, I have the attention span of a cat. That is, incredibly focused at times (usually on a nondescript spot on the wall), but also capable of being distracted by nothing.

No darts, oversized sleeves. 

I didn't really use a pattern -- just sketched out a large, oversized bodice with no darts, and added appropriately oversized sleeves -- since it was such a simple top. Or at least it was in theory. If I had been making this in a nice, well-behaved, non-slippery fabric, it would've gone together in less than an hour. But since chiffon is devilish like that, I took my time and employed a bunch of Andrea's tips for sewing chiffon. French seams everywhere (although I still need to get better at cutting very close to my stitch line so I don't get frayed bits sticking out of my seam!), narrow hems, new needle, and tape on my machine all made things go better than last time. Unfortunately, my chiffon is a weird crinkly kind, so it wouldn't hold a crease and starch didn't really help with the sewing. But! I persevered, went slowly, and in the end, I came out with a very wearable top. And despite the problems it gave me, the nice thing about the crinkly chiffon is that it almost functions as a stretch fabric. All the crinkles, when stretched out, help make this pullover top easy to, well, pull over. But when they're not being stretched, they crinkle back up and make the top look slimmer than it really is.

Besides forgetting what a headache it is to sew with chiffon, I'd also forgotten that setting in sleeves is a pain! And when the already-frustrating setting in process is exacerbated by the slipperiness and fraying of chiffon (and its inability to hold a pin!), well, let's just say that in the future I'll be sewing sleeves in flat if I can. Even after my best efforts, the sleeves are a bit more bubbly than I wanted them to be; let's just say it's a design element again, shall we? Besides, we've got the tabs and buttons on the sleeves as distractions!

You can see what I mean here about the crinkly texture of the chiffon. This made it a beast to work with. 

Summary:
Fabric: 1.5 yards 54" black crinkly polyester chiffon from Michael Levine Loft
Notions: Two gold buttons from one of those giant button grab bins at SAS Fabrics in Tucson
Techniques: Narrow hemming chiffon, French seams
Hours used: About four, curse that chiffon that requires sewing every seam twice, but refuses to hold a crease! And don't even talk to me about making bias tape out of crinkly shifty nightmares.
Will you make it again? If I find the right chiffon, and after I forget about how much work it is to sew with!
Total cost: Less than a dollar, what with leftover fabric and bulk buttons
Final thoughts: Even though I had some curse-worthy moments, I love the resulting look. Chiffon is so lovely and drapey, it almost makes up for itself. And really, what's better than seeing a garment on somebody, then going home and whipping one up yourself for a fraction of the cost? Seriously, the more I sew my own versions of RTW pieces, the more pleased with myself I am.

If we're going to take pictures at this time of the day, we have to go for the backlit sunflare-y shot. 

I realized while I was making this that not only have I not done zippers in forever, I've also not used a real commercial sewing pattern in over a month! Everything I've been making has been more or less pulled out of my head or from existing garments, which is quite fun. When I went to cut out the pattern pieces for the jacket I want to make, I found myself grumbling about the ridiculousness of choosing a size and marking darts and such. Does that ever happen to you, where you forget about what an ordeal it is to prep a new, untested pattern?