Summertime party outfit!

Last weekend I traveled to New Jersey to celebrate my nephews engagement! It was so much fun to get together with most of the family and lots of friends to celebrate such a wonderful occasion and to have a wonderful and beautiful new addition to our family!

The party was held at my older brothers home in NJ and I knew it was going to be a great weekend! My daughter and I got in the day before and helped with some of the decorating. We all had a lot of fun making it very special for the happy couple.

The lovely couple and some decorations

I, of course, had to make a new outfit to celebrate!
My brain went round and round with a plethora of ideas. I ended up with 2 contenders. 1 was for a dress and the other for a pants outfit. I decided to go for the pants outfit. The fabric that I picked for the top was one that my daughter brought home for me from her trip to Poland this spring. Lucky for me I had a pair of 4-ply silk cropped pants in a perfect color to match already in the closet. YAY!!

my ensemble with the silk pants

I used one of my self drafted designs to sew up this blouse. It was a bit of a puzzle to come up with the best pattern layout due to having only one length of the panel to work with. The panel was 60 " wide and about a meter long with it basically being a floral design that went from white to full color saturation. I played around with the fabric in front of the mirror to see which portion was best near my face. This was the full saturation (which I already knew but having confirmation always helps!) I could also play with the design ease and how full and floaty versus fitted I wanted the top to be.

My mom and I

If I made the top more fitted I could  have fit all of the bodice pieces on the high saturation area. However, it was not really the look I was going for. Plus, I knew there was a high chance of it being hot out for the party. It was 95 all day! I played around with using 2 different fabrics and in the end I sort of used all the fabric on the panel in a sort of color blocked way.

It worked out perfect, I love the end result and it wore wonderfully even in the hot and humid weather!

3 Generations! Plus my older brother photo bombing us!!

So, if you are very observant you may have noticed that my pants have changed part way through the photos... Well, it was a party and as sometimes happens there was a party foul that required me to remove my silk pants and wash them out immediately with club soda! Luckily I had a new pair of summer linen pants in a bright green that also went well with the top. Not quite as fancy but in a pinch they worked. More on those in another post.

All the details! bottom left is a close up of the fabric. A very spongy woven and was quite nice to wear!

Construction of this top was quite simple. I sewed all the vertical seams first on the sewing machine and then serged each seam allowance separately so they could be pressed open. I stabilized the shoulder seams with a small piece of fusible stabilizer tape, used a facing for the neckline with several small catch stitches to hold the facing in place. The sleeve and body hem were done with a tiny rolled hem technique that I like.

We always have a good time together!!