Sunday 26 July 2009

BWOF 09-2008-115 White shirt

I have wandered off the straight and narrow with my sewing. I was wrestling with a BWOF dress for myself, and somehow after the second toile was still dreadful, my mojo went walkabout, so I have been knitting. However, as my June sewing was so frantic, I have some unreported sewing to disclose.
My daughter loved the safari vest outfit in the June BWOF. The deal was that she would make the vest (morphed to a dress) and that I would make her a shirt to wear underneath, so that she would look fabulous and non-childish in Sydney whilst on holidays. It is tricky to dress well when you are 14 and do not want to appear 10 years old, and your mother does not want you to appear 19 years old :).
I looked through my patterns, and found very few shirt patterns for a size 6-8 (Australian) or size 34 European. As I was feeling rather lazy, grumpiness ensued when I thought about scaling down a pattern for such a basic item. Fortunately for me, I eventually remembered this fabulous blouse by Trena and when I went to look at the pattern review, I found that there was a standard collar version as well.

Link to Technical drawing

I have darkened the photographs so that the details are visible.




Trena found that this pattern did not require a SBA, so I thankfully left out this step and cut a straight 34. I also followed Trena in extending the back darts up past the shoulder blades to remove the excess fabric that gave a Quasimodo look to the non altered garment. It is a reasonable fit IMO, considering that I made it whilst my daughter was away on camp, and I am sure that she grew whilst she was gone.The only additional alteration (other than Trena's) I made was to shorten the distance between the shoulder and bust point slightly. I think I will cut the sleeves down to above the elbow once the weather warms up, so that my daughter can wear this useful blouse into spring and summer.

2 comments:

Carolyn (Diary of a Sewing Fanatic) said...

This blouse will look fantastic under the vest/dress that I loved! I love how you said your sewing mojo took a walkabout...

Gail said...

I like this blouse a lot - in fact would wear it myself. I agree that it is very difficult to dress 'tweens'. My oldest daughter was perfectly happy in dresses and girlish outfits. Four years later when mini-me was the same age she wanted big sister's teen fashions. She refused to wear dresses or skirts from age 9. Pity.