Refashioning: Updating a Long-Sleeve Bow Tie Blouse - Tailoring and Creating a Keyhole

The bow tie blouse was an office staple in the 60s, 70s, and 80s, but then it died off for about 25 or so years. Anyways, it's back, Baby! That means you can raid those dated thrift store racks versus going out to buy a brand new one! All you need is two simple sewing steps and you have a stylish, updated blouse!

So, here is one that I found last week on a thrifting adventure. It is a bonafide vintage blouse from the 70s. I loved the color, and since it is polyester, it will NEVER die! :) However, you can see it's WAY too "blouse-y" for current trends.

The first thing to do is to turn the blouse inside out. Make sure the shoulders fit. A lot of vintage blouses have HUGE shoulders, and some of them are even padded. If you run across this issue, you will have to take in the shoulders. Anyways, these shoulders were just at my acceptable limit, so I left them where they were.

Then, I pinned all down the inside seams of the sleeves from the base of the cuff (I left the cuff itself alone), up to the armpit, and then down the side of the bodice. I did that on both sides.

And here is the second really important "current trend" step: Creating a keyhole under the bow. All I did was fold the button placket back from the base of the bow ties to the second button, stitch that part down, and then cut off the top button. That's how easy making a keyhole is! This picture is showing you the pinned keyhole from the wrong side.

And here is the "Before" on the left and the "After" on the right!

Super easy!

The End!