KnipMode blouse - a lot of tweaking

After all that harsh blue I was in the mood for something a bit more cheery.
The fabric I'm using for my next project has been attracting my attention for a long time. It's a lovely vibrant lilac colour with embroidery. I had no idea what to do with it, until I found this pattern:

I love all the pleats, the round neckline, the short sleeves. I just love the whole silhouette of this blouse. Especially the way how the pleats are sewn down from the waist to the hem. This gives a nice fulness in the upper part of the blouse, but creates at the same time a more fitted lower part. Very much to my liking. There are however some issues. Things that need changing.







The (lower) pleats
Unfortunately, the pleats that work so well in the front, are misbehaving in the back just above the waistline.
What I will do is sew the pleats up from the waist and treat them like darts. This should take away some of the excess fabric.

The neckline
The neckline is also very wide, although the picture is not showing that very well. (The model wearing this in KnipMode is wearing a jacket over the blouse, covering almost 90% of it. Damn...is KnipMode doing a 'Burda-ish cover-up' or what??)  I could wear it like this, but I would be very conscious all the time wether it would drop off my shoulders, because there is a serious chance of that happening if I don't change it. The original instructions tell you to zigzag or serge the neckline, so no seams or binding are used to finish it. That would mean the neckline stays exactly as it is now. There are 2 things I could do to solve this:

1. Deepen the neckline-pleats.
2. Put a flat round band on it, which means drafting a new pattern-piece to place on top of the neckline.

I'm strongly leaning towards option 2, but I could try option 1 first to see if that would help.

The sleeves
I already widened the sleeves a bit by cutting the patternpiece and moving the pieces away from each other. Then I redrafted the new sleeve. I think I could have done without this alteration but it's ok as it is.

Stay tuned if you want to find out how this ends. I hope it ends gooood  ;-)

Lilian


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