Simplicity 9461 Blouse D #3, morphing and stash busting

 

I finished my vogue blouse trial #1, but have not progressed to #2, as I was distracted by my DD the younger's urgent need for a finalized travel wardrobe. She leaves on Friday! In the interest of time management, I have used the same blouse pattern, but I could not bear to make the same version, so have included some unfortunately not quick dry friendly pattern changes. In addition I am able to include this blouse in the pattern review stash 'contest'. The fabric is from last summer's Spotlight purchase (Oct or Nov 2007)for cheap and cheerful cottons for summer dresses. Most of my stash seems to be small yardages left over from other projects. This fabric has already been a dress in DD the younger's travel wardrobe, and is now making another appearance. The pattern calls for 1.3m. The shapes I had left were rather odd, so I am assuming this is appoximately what I used.
This time I have added puffed sleeves to the blouse. In order to make these look appropriate, I needed to take in the shoulders a little. I could have cut it out smaller than the slightly extended shoulder of the design, but as my daughter is not getting any smaller, I chose to add a tuck across the finished shoulder seam. If the length is still O.K. next year, I can take this out if she grows width ways. Below is the inside view of the tuck.

 

This photo below shows how I morphed the sleeve to a puff sleeve. I folded the original sleeve piece in half length ways (you can see that I had already cut out the blouse before I decided on this change). I placed this piece 2 inches from the folded fabric, and cut straight across from the original pattern piece. The new sleeve is gathered top and bottom. I did cut the new sleeve with a slight downward curve at the centre to acommodate all this fabric without the cuff pulling up. The cuff is an interfaced and doubled over band, cut to the arm circumference + around 3cm of ease.

 

The photograph below shows a close up of the outside view of the shoulder tuck, and of the new collar shape. I drew a curve across the collar corner, and the center front point to give a different look to the neckline. In this photo you can see that I have used the bias binding finish for the inside back of the neckline again. I like this neat finish.