I have a confession peeps: Up until last year, I didn’t even own a basic white blouse. And in looking at my closet I also notice that I currently don’t have a basic black blouse either. Eeeep!
I feel as if I’ve been making do with what I have but at times my outfits don’t feel very coordinated as much as I’d like.
Black and white blouses aren’t the most fun things I could be sewing with summer nearing (hopefully). I’d much rather be sewing some flirty new skirts or pretty new sun dresses, but I’ve just decided that I have to make some blouses instead, and some basic ones at that.
I generally dislike making blouses. I believe it’s primarily due to the fact that I have a difficult time fitting the armscye. While I’m a pear-shaped gal, I have a very petite upper body with narrow shoulders. That coupled with the fact that I have forward rotating shoulders (due to poor posture while at my computer) and slightly sloping shoulders makes pattern changes somewhat complicated.
I generally have to:
- Shorten the armscye/raise the underarm seam up at least 1/2 inch
- Which means that I have to adjust the sleeve pattern to match
- Adjust the angle of the shoulder/ sew the shoulder seams deeper toward the edge of my shoulder for my slight slope
- Which means that I have more sleeve adjustments to make to match
- Narrow the shoulders
- I have to narrow the shoulders so much that I can’t just take the extra width at the shoulder seam, but find sneaky ways like adding in darts or taking long wedges out of the pattern piece
- Add width from the waist, downward to accommodate my hippy hips
For my basic white blouse, I picked out a basic 40’s/50’s blouse pattern: McCalls 7838.
I just bought this pattern via etsy and fell in love with it instantly. The short sleeved version is very reminiscent of the 40’s while the 3/4 and long sleeved versions are very 50’s.
In: Sewing
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