Slow Burn

You only need to take one look at this shirt to know I would love it! It's bright! It's got curlicues! It's tailored and sophisticated! It's sleeveless for summer comfort! And to top it all off, it has a unique old-timey oriental aesthetic with its loop-and-button closure and mandarin collar. Of course I loved it, but you would not believe the work I had to put in to make it wearable!

Being what I deem another relic of the 90's, the sizing on this shirt is a little smaller than that of the present day, making it just a tad too tight around the bust. The buttons, which connected the two sides of the shirt with nary an overlap, allowed it to gape most indecently. An easy fix would be to simply wear another layer underneath it, but that would make it tighter and hotter, which is exactly what I don't want in a summer blouse.

Fortunately, almost all the openings were finished with a large fabric facing, so I felt like I should be able to use that in some way to create a mock inner layer that would only cover the button placket. I tried ironing it in place with no success, then I decided to use snaps.

First, I had to make the facing into a movable flap. I used buttonhole stitching to prevent fraying, and cut it free after the raw edges were thus enclosed.

One snap at the top holds the flap to the inside of the other half.

Now when I wear the blouse, the buttons still gape, but there is a matching piece of fabric behind them to keep everything prim and proper.

It took me months to discover and complete this alteration, and then weeks more before I felt the time was right for a bright red-and-orange top. It looked so fierce and fiery, I didn't want to squander it on just any old day—meanwhile, it was practically burning a hole in my closet!

When I finally did decide to wear it, it ended up being just any old day after all. It was today.

But before I took it out into the world, I had to fix another problem with the fit! Like many late-90's tops, this one was cut short...and while the bust had been a little too tight, there was still plenty of room—too much room—at the bottom end of it.

It flared out slightly above my hips, and I don't know about you, but I hate shirts that do that! Something about that gap skews my proportions in ways I don't even want to waste my time describing. But I will describe a way to deal with it!

The no-sew solution for a too-wide blouse

I think shirts look best when they create a smooth line from waist to hips, with no gap between the shirt and pants. However, If you have a tailored blouse that isn't tailored to your exact proportions, you may find that the bottom portion is too wide and/or too high above your hips.

One solution (and one that I use often) is to tailor the back or sides so they align precisely with your own unique curves.

But stitchcraft isn't always the answer to every problem! You can also simply fill in the gaps with other clothing!

I like to do this with a voluminous skirt worn at the waist. This adds tons of bulk to your hips, banishing the awkward-looking gap like it was never there!

Today, I chose my black tulle skirt to do the job. I felt like black was a good pairing with the shirt, evoking charred wood while the shirt evoked flame.

The blue hair is perhaps a tiny bit incongruous, but I wasn't about to let my new dye job stand in the way of my chosen outfit! I figure you can interpret the hair two ways—either as bluish smoke rising from a conflagration, or as water coming to douse it. Either way, this outfit tells a story!