Stitching tip: embroidering on a light-weight Róza blouse

Dora had the following question about embroidering on the Róza blouse: how do you support the weight if you sew the blouse out of a very light-weight fabric, like cotton voile or gauze? I've just stitched straight onto voile before and was fine with the results but, depending on your fabric, you might not want to just wing it. There are a couple things you can do. First, you can use tear-away stabilizer, any kind you prefer. Some type of iron-on and tear-away is probably the easiest to use like Sulky, but Stitch'n Tear would work too.

Or you could go with the t-shirt stabilizer by Sublime Stitching, should you want to support another embroiderish small business with your purchase. What's neat about this stabilizer is that if you want to stitch on dark fabric you can put it on the TOP of the fabric - the right side, that is - and transfer your pattern directly onto the stabilizer, getting around the problem of how to transfer embroidery designs onto dark fabric. Check out this tutorial by Sublime Stitching for how to do this. Works for denim just as well as t-shirts.

Another thing you can do is what I did for this blouse:

Here's a closeup:

You see how the blue embroidery is on a different fabric than the rest of the blouse? The body of this Róza blouse is a soft, lightweight, striped voile. But for the piece that has embroidery on it (the flat front inset: pattern piece D) I used a matching cotton broadcloth. Full disclosure: this piece of embroidery was made by a lovely old lady in a small village in Hungary when I did not yet know how to do this style of embroidery myself. I love the geometric design and the combination of stitches used to make it. Being able to embroider on some of the pieces separately, before you sew the blouse together, was a major reason why the center front has either the small square inset or the flat long one. It's just easier to stitch on a smaller piece of fabric than a whole blouse. (Not that this would ever stop me from embroidering on a finished blouse.) There you go - I hope that helps!