Postcards from the Underside

Art is about the edges and the sharp corners...

~ Scott Thompson

Across the last few evenings, during short breaks from worrying about taking on the responsibility of having a teenager in the house, I made a little bit of progress on the postcard blouse.  I worked on the neckline facing.  

I got off to a rocky start, as far as figuring out how to align the side pieces with the front center piece.  First, I initially mistook the clip marks in this picture for the two marks on the pattern pieces:  

As you can see from the pattern pieces themselves, there is NO WAY that you can get the center piece to stretch to fill the space between the two marks on the side piece!  But that wasn't my only issue - the written instructions say to line up the mark on the side piece with the top of the front piece.  But the text on the pattern pieces themselves say to line up the 2 marks...  

In the end, I just split the difference and aligned the mark on the side piece to be mid-way between the top of the front piece and the mark on the front piece.  (So, I was wrong no matter which instruction I was supposed to follow...  You know, just preparing myself for living with a teenager.)  

I always find it so awkward to stitch together pieces that don't begin and/or end together.  It looks so wrong to me:  

I guess it looked a little better after I pressed the seam to one side:  

The next step was to attach the front and back facing pieces:  

Finally, I got to fold up a narrow hem along the bottom of the neckline facing, and that fixed the funky mis-matches between the pieces in front:  

Now, THAT's looking more reasonable:  

The last bit I had time to do was to stitch the facing to the blouse along the neckline, right sides together, clip to the pivot points and then turn the whole thing right-side out.  

For me, this is the crux - getting nice corners.  Here's one corner seen from the outside:  

And the same corner seen from the inside:  

I've done this pattern once before and one corner came out well, but the other was a bit lumpy and doesn't lay smoothly.  This time, both corners look pretty good.  :)

I think I'm down to three remaining bits: the sleeve bands, the hem and the back closure (buttons and button holes).  Who knows?  Maybe I'll be wearing it to work next week...  ;)