I saw this blouse on Amanda over at
Bimble and Pimble and fell so in love with it, that I had to have it, immediately searching out the pattern on the internet and buying the pattern within minutes of finishing reading about Amanda's blouse. Like many people I'm a sucker for a bow, but with a wardrobe of plenty of pussy bows, I probably don't need any more, but I thought this might make a small change. Or maybe not. Ben said he really liked it but that it looked like all my other blouses when I was showing it to him this morning. Mmm. Clearly he wasn't looking properly!
I had plenty of the
Mawston Meadow Liberty print that I bought in France and was left over from my
Laurel so cut the pattern out a few weeks ago, but then sidelined it for a while. Firstly for
my cape and then for
my culottes. I don't normally sew like that, where I have an unfinished item that lingers around but fortunately Me Made May provided enough incentive to finish just one more item before month end.
It's a cute little pattern, but it pushed me a little bit. It's not like my other blouses (see!!) because it's reasonably fitted with a side zipper which I didn't realise was there until after I'd cut out the pattern (note to self to read the instructions and the required notions first!). I inserted an invisible zip on the side, though I don't think that's what the pattern called for but it looks pretty good and the material (or at least the pattern) is very forgiving. There's a whole lot of darts too which I don't love doing a whole lot, but after quite a bit of wrangling on the bust dart reckon I got it pretty right.
As I was sewing yesterday I was listening to
this great podcast interview with Kenneth D King on fit - so I was kind of forced to focus on getting that bit right - as best as I could. By the way, highly recommend these podcasts! I think I'll work my way through them all.
So the bow!
Amanda mentioned in her post about the bow and yikes, the instructions ask you to gather it, but seriously, I had interfaced the bow (as per the pattern instructions) and as a result there was no way that bow was going to be gathered! Tana Lawn is pretty lightwight, so in all honesty, if I were to make this again, I wouldn't interface. And wearing the top today to work it felt a bit top heavy and I worried a bit about how the bow was sitting. You can see from the photos that the bow has a tendency to move bit which, with a floppy bow wouldn't be such a big deal. I wish I'd noticed the slight lopsidedness of how the bow was sitting before I took the pictures - but hey it's going to move around a bit anyway as it's only attached at the centre!
Overall a pretty cute make. Enjoyed wearing it today and think it will get a lot of winter wear as it is a great Winter colour and very good with a cardi!
