Sharing on Sunday

I'm stealing a Sunday night blogging catch up here - heater is on, telly is showing something decent, a cup of tea is made and there's pear and chocolate cake for dessert.  We've had a busy week just gone - the last week of school term was full of activities, my parents came for in impromptu visit and to be honest I've enjoyed a little bit of a break away from the computer (but not the sewing machine!).

I'm going to ease myself back into blogging by sharing some pictures of the blouse I made from my own pattern.  The basis of this top was pattern New Look 6892 which is a peasant style blouse.  I've made it a few times before and it's fairly tight fitting.  I wanted to loosen it up so widened the bodice to be more like top B from The Stylish Dress Book, which I made here.

Instead of creating a casing for an elasticised neckline I gathered the front part of the bodice only (which keeps the neckline nice and low instead of drawing it up higher), 

I gathered the top of the sleeves at the shoulders, 

and put some tucks in the back neckline.  

I finished the neckline with bias binding, hand sewing it on the inside.  I also didn't make elasticised sleeves, again using bias binding around the hem edge to finish them off.

To be honest I didn't really know what I was doing here in terms of making the blouse fit around the neck and shoulders.  I took some measurements of tops I already had in my wardrobe and tried to make an educated guess about how much to gather where etc., but it was a healthy dose of luck that got it to fit as well as it did.  I did have a moment of panic when I thought that without the elastic neckline I wouldn't be able to get the top on over my head...but my worries were unfounded.

One thing I was aiming to do was bring the back neckline up higher as I found it scoops down a bit low but had one of those "ah-ha" moments when I eventually realised that such a modification is due to the cut of the armhole and not a matter of how gathered or not the back bodice fabric is.  I'm learning, learning here I tell you!

Then to finish I (rather stupidly) sewed a double hem at the bottom of the blouse.  Once you get a little bit of wonkiness in either of the rows of stitching its super noticable where its not in a single row of stitches. Ergh. I was also thinking I might bring the sides in just a little but, and now I have two rows of stitching to unpick at the hem instead of the usual one, which pretty much guarantees that I'm not going to be making any modifications in that department any time soon.

In the gorgeous Brisbane winter sun I've been wearing this blouse with jeans, boots and a scarf, plus I've had some lovely compliments on it too so I'm further encouraged to modify and merge patterns more often....so of course you know I've got something going in the works already...