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!

Chanel Inspired: The Split Sleeve Shirt/Dress

I used the shirts below (and Chanel's Spring/Summer 2013 RTW fashion show, of course) as my inspiration.

I bought the striped shirt from South Korea years ago and the pink shirt from a Chinese website. The pink shirt looks horrible on me, but I love the split sleeve idea, so I fused that idea together with the balloon bottom and full long sleeves of the striped shirt. When I get frustrated because I can't find an article of clothing in stores or online that I want, I start thinking of how to make it!

This is what I came up with. Originally, I wanted to make the entire thing out of the fuzzy grey jersey, but there wasn't enough material left (I had used some of it to make the top part of The Flashdance Dress), so I used the black jersey from The Coco Dress to make the arms and the band along the bottom. I think this shirt looks a little more Fendi than Chanel with the color blocking.

I actually used the striped shirt sleeves as the pattern for these sleeves, but wanted the shirt to look more cohesive, so I ballooned the bottoms of the sleeves to match the bottom of the dress.

I had a few tiny scraps of metallic from The Nude Shimmer Dress, so I put that along the capped part of the sleeve to draw attention to the shoulders.

Here's my "Cheap Walmart Knockoff" short cut to my earlier dresses: Instead of piecing the collar together the way I did for The Flashdance Dress, I just sewed a line through the top layer and inner facing to look like a mock collar. I think it looks just as good and helps with cohesion to the "Chanel Inspired" collection with less work. 

The back.

When you wear the shirt, it's not as obnoxiously split at the sleeves as when it's on a hangar or dress form.

Being silly.

The End.