Silver Camisole

I have been collecting fabrics in anticipation of a wardrobe contest on PR, based on the colours peach, khaki, grey and a purpley sort of blue.  This year the contest is only 6 pieces, so I have pared back my choices to peach, grey and white.  One of my grey fabrics was a silk satin wrap that I made years and years ago and never wear.

I decided to make a silk camisole.  It looked like I sewed really neat hems all those (possibly 15) years ago, and hemming satin can be tricky, so I decided to utilise those hems.  This meant altering my self-drafted pattern to have straight hems.  I thought it would be nice to add a side split hem detail.  This created a little problem, in that I wanted to do French seams, but didn't know how to combine French seams with a split hem detail.  The internet is a wonderful place, and after some searching, I came across a tutorial for that very same detail (by Ruth Cabble - thanks so much Ruth for sharing your knowledge).  You can find the tutorial here.

Here is a photo of the inside, where the French seam meets the split.

I must not have trimmed my seams correctly, because on each side I ended up with a tiny tuft of fabric sticking out, as you can see in the photo below.

Side split detail

It turns out that the fabric is not ideal for a camisole.  I didn't have enough fabric to cut it on the bias, and it hangs a little funny from where the neckline binding extends into straps.  On my previous version of this pattern, I inserted the straps between an outer layer and the lining, which worked better, but I did not have enough fabric to line this version.  On an even earlier version (unblogged) I extended the straps from the armhole binding, rather than the neck binding, which I think was smoother than this version.

The fabric creases terribly, but it does feel lovely to wear, which I think will outweigh the crease factor.

Here it is after being worn for a whole day...creases galore.

Stay tuned for a blog post on those peach pants!