Simplicity 8499 - Rayon

Remember this pattern in cotton?  Now I'm making it in rayon!  A rayon challis, to be precise.  Since my previous makes were cotton voile, which has a crispness to it, the shirt will look different in rayon challis, which is light and drapey. 

As for the views, I always make View 3, the one with the notched collar.  I think the other two look more dated.  But View 2 might be really pretty in charmeuse....

Challis (say "SHALL-ee") is a soft woven fabric ideal for blouses, dresses, and scarves.  Its name means "soft".  It's a recent invention, dating back only to the 1830's, when it was made of wool/silk.  Nowadays, I see it most often in rayon (often in bright, busy prints), but occasionally in wool.  I have never seen a cotton or polyester challis. 

Now, I have mixed feelings about rayon challis.  It was super popular in clothing from the 1980's, and so as a thrift-store-clothed kid in the 1990's, I wore it a lot growing up.  It always wrinkled, and after a few washings pilled like an old flannel sheet.  Rayon challis shirts would show pilling in the armpits, and skirts would just pill all over.  It was awful.  The seams tended to fray and come apart, too.  As a result, I now associate rayon challis with cheapness, and the feeling of being ill-dressed.  It makes me feel poor.  I rarely sew with it. 

Click to zoom in!

Selvedge label

But when I saw this one as a low-bolt (discounted to sell the last little bit) at the Mill End Store, I was tempted.  It's the color scheme I like... saturated fall colors, warm tones like faces around a fire... it makes me think of a children's book.  You know the kind of book I mean: sparse words, illustrations covering every inch of the large, glossy pages!  You don't open such a book, you fall into its world.  Wonderful! 

According to the selvedge, the fabric is from Jam's World, which seems to be a maker of Hawaiian clothing.  This particular print is not very Hawaiian, though: it looks like scene from a Persian story, maybe a romance or adventure. . 

My enthusiasm for the print is dampened somewhat by the fact that it's printed slightly off grain, and that the red-orange stripes, which are so visually strong, are uneven.  These factors make layout of the pattern pieces difficult, especially as I only have just enough fabric to work with, anyway.  Below, I experiment with different ways to lay the pieces out.  I am trying to see if I can get a balanced, if not symmetrical, arrangement of patterns.  No such luck: the red-orange stripes would look nice centered across the shoulders, but they are too close to the edge of the fabric for the tissue pattern pieces to fit.  If I try to center a single panel in my center back, the red-orange lines are unbalanced, and there's no room for facings or collar pieces to be cut out. 

Makin' my life difficult.

In the end, I settle for folding the fabric selvedge to selvedge, and laying the pattern pieces out how they fit--let the print fall where it may. 

Makin' my life easy.

The only thing I fussy-cut is the front facing piece.  After I cut everything else out, I carefully place the front facings where the revers will show interesting pictures when the shirt collar is open: 

I think that hunter is shooting at my face!

THE COLLAR

I decide to make the collar with a wee strip of silk taffeta I have in my scrap bag.  It's not wide enough for the collar piece, so I have to piece two strips together.  Then I wash and iron the silk.  This puts perma-creases in it, but I'm calling them texture.  Better to have them from the start than have a collar that makes the shirt impossible to launder!  Finally, I applique a strip of rayon seam binding to the piece, next to the seam, as ornament.  There... now the collar has a stripe.  Totally intentional and planned for. 

layer collar pattern on pieced silk

I go to bed, and the next morning discover that Pretty Kitty has left a none-so-pretty mess on half of the collar.  I wash it again, and iron it dry... and the spot is still there.  So, with a sigh, I pick the seam apart and piece a new strip on.  It's all rather tedious and I'm afraid the collar is getting shop-worn, but finally I interface it and it looks good.

new collar being pieced together

Ready to cut out the new collar

WORKING WITH RAYON

Remember being a kid, and mixing corn starch and water in just the right proportions so that it's seemingly a liquid and a solid at the same time?  You pinch it and it crunches, hard, between your fingers, and the next moment melts away, leaving your fingers damp.  Fun, right?  Rayon challis is a bit like that.  You cut it out, and you think it's one size.  Then you press it, or breathe on it, or move it, and it grows!  Or you ease it to fit a shorter seam, and it scrunches easily into a smaller size.

rayon grows!

This picture shows the correct collar shape and size in the white interfacing.  The rayon under it has grown after being cut!  Since the rayon will be the undercollar, I'd rather it be too small than have it be baggy, so I iron and stretch it taut, then trim the edges away. 

In the course of working with rayon, I get some rayon advice from a friend: rayon doesn't like to be hot or wet!  It should be washed in warm or cool water, and not tumbled dry, certainly not with heat.  Huh... knowing how my family washed laundry when I was growing up, I think maybe we simply abused our rayon to its ignominious, pilly death.  RIP rayon.  So while working with this challis, I avoid using a super hot iron. 

Collar sewn

Collar turned

COVERED BUTTONS

Covered buttons are a good way to bring a look together.  In this project, I decide to use my last scraps of silk taffeta to cover the buttons, thus bringing the orange of the collar down into the rest of the shirt.  Dritz makes cover-button kits which are really easy to use. 

STEP 1: Put fabric face-down in the rubber base.

STEP 2: Press the rounded cap face-down into the rubber base. Tug the fabric up while pushing the cap down. Trim the fabric edges.

STEP 3: Tuck the fabric's edges into the concavity of the cap. The metal button back will go on top of the edges, next.

STEP 4: Put the button's back, shaft-side up, on top of the fabric. Put the hard plastic pusher atop that. Stand up and press the pusher until the backing clicks into the cap, sandwiching the fabric inside.

I found the interfacing on the taffeta made it too thick for this, so I had to peel it off.

Finished buttons.

THE BOX PLEATS

The pattern calls for slender box pleats, ironed open and then top-stitched down.  I use an unvarnished wooden chopstick as an improvised ironing board to help me with this. 

Here's the chopstick...

I slide the chopstick into the box pleat.

And I press the seam open. The chopstick lifts the seam up and helps me press it without crumpling the back. Then I'm done with the chopstick.

From the back, I press the box pleat open evenly, with the seam centered in the middle.

box pleats top-stitched open

BUTTONHOLES

Buttonholes are my bêtes noires.  My machine, Boudica, hates doing them, and so do I.  I love/hate the buttonholes on this blouse.  I love them because I found good thread color-matches for each buttonhole, so they would blend into the shirt.  I hate them because some of my thread was old, and the machine kept skipping stitches and having tension problems.

And, because I'm fussy, I use some fabric markers to color in a few areas.

Finally, the buttonholes are done.  I seal them with Fray Check, because I'm cautious that way. 

COST

     1.5 yard rayon challis
x $9.49 (price per yard)
 $14.24
less 50%
   $7.12

All other materials from my stash.  Not bad at all!  I could buy a shirt at the thrift store for less, and not have nearly as much fun! 

FINISHED PICS