Good from afar...

... but far from good.

Here is my Pendrell blouse, hanging on the door.  The fabric is a pain to photograph, it looks better on, but it's 8:00am and I'm in no shape to be photographed!  So just trust me on this one that it looks totally fine when you step back. (and no, I haven't hemmed it yet, ignore that!)

This is the problem with my blouse when you take a closer look:

To explain all that's going on here, I need to explain the fabric first.  It's a poly crepe de chine I got from Fabric Mart.  One reason I like buying fabric online is because it's never exactly what I expected, but it's usually better and I feel like it pushes me to try new things or to afford better things than I could get in a brick & mortar store.  At first I really enjoyed this fabric, it's really crisp, and it makes a satisfying little noise when you cut it.  Plus it's reversible and that alleviated a lot of stress!

When I first cut the fabric I had no problems, but the more I worked with it the more it started to ravel.  I remember standing up at one point and being covered by the little ravel strings.

As I said before, I wanted to push myself and try French seams.  They weren't that bad, took a bit longer, but not as much as I expected.  However, because my fabric likes to ravel so much, what happened is that those little stupid fringy strings stick out in the French seams!

I'm not a perfectionist, so I thought I could live with it, but I can't.  Sigh.  So I'm going to have to rip out the French seams, pinking shear the fringe real close to the first seam and then resew the second seam.  I was so excited to make this blouse, and so excited about my fabric, and so excited about finally conquering French seams, so I feel really defeated right now.  I'm setting it aside for a few days until I feel better about tackling this.

I can't bear to end this post at such a low point, so I leave you all with hopeful optimism for my next project.  I'm starting this cardigan in a tan/gold pinstripe knit also from Fabric Mart.  Here's to success!