Advance 5867 : A 50's Peasant Blouse

Project: A fifties style peasant blouse
Pattern: Advance 5867, Undated but approximately early 50's. Bought from a vintage shop for 5$
Fabric: Silk charmeuse, 1 yard 6$, bias trim bought at garage sales and lace from downtown LA and trim approximately 1$
Time to make: About 4 hours because of all the hand stitching.
Total Cost: About 12$

I borrowed this great Mexican skirt from the Santa Paula Theatre where I  sometimes work as a costume designer. I'm showing it in my vintage fashion show on Saturday. Since this is a charity event and I am not wanting to spend a fortune making things for it , I decided to go through my fabrics and patterns to make a matching blouse.

The finished outfit
This skirt is an example of a tourist skirt from the 1950's. When tourists would go to Mexico they would often buy these colorful and beautiful circle skirts to bring back to the US. This particular skirt is from Mexico City and has an Aztec motif. It still needs a crinoline to bring it to life.

I decided to use a silk charmeuse that I thought matched the skirt trimmed with some bias tape and lace, all of which I  had on hand. The lace was bought from the FIDM Scholarship store. It was a steal, 4 dollars for a whole paddle of it. ( About 25 yards.) I love this pickstitching detail I have seen on other garments. It gives kind of a pretty handmade look. In this case it looks a little too handmade!

 (My 8 year old Lily just told me, " You have to work on your hand sewing Mom!")

A casing created with bias tape with elastic pulled through.

Detail of the bias tape facing which is hand stitched on the inside to avoid machine marks .
 Instead of sewing facings into sleeveless blouses like this you can just attach bias tape but you have to hand stitch it down on the inside to avoid the machine stitched look. The little picks show through on the silk charmeuse, unfortunately. I probably should have just sewn the recommended facings, but I can't ever seem to follow those pattern instructions precisely.
I like to think of them as suggestions only!
How about you? Do you veer from the directions too? Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't!