Postmark Blouse Princess Seams

My professional aspirations were simple - 

I wanted to be an intergalactic princess.

~ Janet Evanovich

I haven't had much free time at home lately - at least, not much time that I felt good enough to do anything - but I did get a start on my postmark blouse.  Gwen suggested that I add some flat piping in the seams - which I think would look very cool - but, I didn't have any suitable fabric or bias binding on hand at the time and I really wanted to get started.  

So, I'll file that idea away for next time!  :)

This blouse has princess seams:  

I've learned a lot from all of you about how best to do princess seams.  First, I don't actually pin the main part of the princess seam - I just pin on either end of it.  

Next, I stitch with the longer (more rounded) piece of fabric against the feed dogs, gently stretching the top (shorter) piece to fit the lower (longer) piece as I stitch around the curved part.  

And, of course, I always baste first!  

Why?  Well...  

Here you can see one of the main princess seams:  

I ended up with perfect alignment at the top on one side:  

...but the other side was off a little bit:  

It's probably not completely legitimate, but I just trimmed the taller bit a smidge to make the 2 pieces line up...  

Now, I'm not sure if the shoulder straps count as more princess seams, but they are definitely curved and required some stretching to get the two pieces to line up.  

Here you can see the shoulder strap pinned at the side seam:  

...and here I have just flipped it up to show how it will be once it is sewn on along the curved seam: 

While I did have to do some stretching, these seams were definitely easier than the princess seams up the front of the blouse.  

Here is the front of the blouse - isn't it interesting how the 3 pieces intersect?  

I spent a bit of time trying to line up the print along these 3 pieces.  Now that I've assembled them, I'm not sure if it was worth it.  Also, I pretty much ignored what would be front and center on the blouse - I probably should have paid more attention to that!  Oh well, live and learn - it could be worse.  ;)

So, there is still lots of work to do - but it felt good to get some sewing time in!  :)