Soft Pleats Shirt

Apologies for the unintentionally long break between posts- I feel like I've had barely a moment to myself in months! Here's another shirt I made back in May.

  I bought this piece of black modal knit from Sincerely Rylee to try earlier this year, and it's such a lovely fabric- soft, with a heavy, graceful drape (although I've since discovered that not all modal knits are quite as nice as this one). I modified my knit shirt block to add some pleats, off-centered around a small rectangular section, and included a some ties in the sides of the rectangle. This was not the easiest thing I've ever sewn, in spite of lightly interfacing some sections to reduce the stretch! So it's not very clean, but I've yet to successfully seam-rip a knit, so it stays.

  I brought the section below the rectangle to a point. I expected that to be rather difficult to lettuce-edge, but it was much easier than I expected- I just started and stopped at the point, and threaded my tails in extra-carefully. I stretched the fabric much less near the point to keep it a bit more defined, but stretched normally the rest of the way around the hem.

 I also drew in a curved line on my sleeve piece, then flared the lower portion out to a half-circle and added a point to that as well.

  I love how the sleeves feel, although the weight of the knit makes them sit a bit lower on my arms than I'd meant for them to.

  I wish I'd tightened the whole shirt up a bit, or added a draped detail to the back of the shirt. As it is, it feels a little bit sloppy instead of graceful.

  But I do love this knit, and I really like the way the points turned out. Definitely something I'd like to experiment with more!

  The skirt might be a bit familiar- I took this dress, which I only wore a few times, and combined it with the lining from the lace skirt in this post, once that skirt was no longer wearable! Right now this black shirt is the only thing I can wear the skirt with, so it hasn't been worn all that many more times as a skirt than it was as a dress, but I do like it better.

  And that's it!

Thanks for stopping by,