Sunday 12 January 2014

My first muslin

Okay - so this is just a muslin, a rough version made from not-so-nice fabric to determine whether the pattern is flattering enough to cut up nice fabric for.
 

The pattern is a (60s or 70s?) vintage blouse with bell-bottom sleeves. When I bought it, as part of a bundle of vintage patterns on ebay, I thought it was similar to Tilly's Matilde Blouse.

I'd been umming and ahhing about the Matilde for ages - there have been many beautiful versions made (my favourite is sew amy sew's version in peanut-butter voile).  What's put me off is that the pattern is only available as a PDF currently, although Tilly has mentioned on her blog that she has plans for printed patterns in the future.


My muslin is made from a pale old blue poly-cotton sheet that had worn far too thin to serve its proper function any more.




The blouse has a zip rather than buttons, which I actually rather love.  It gives it a lovely vintage feel.


I think the blouse suits being tucked in more than loose.


The sleeves are rather funky, but I'm unsure about the blouse itself.  I think it needs more room (is that called ease?): maybe an inch or two on either side seam.

But I can't decide whether to turn my muslin into a finished outfit in a nice printed cotton, or wait and see if the Matilde blouse comes out in a printed format later in the year.   What would you do?

5 comments:

  1. I think the top of the blouse looks OK, but if it were me I think I'd definitely want to have a bit more room around the hips. If you like the Matilde blouse then I'd give that a try - I've used a few PDF patterns and they're really easy to put together.

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  2. Yes I agree it definitely needs more room at the hips. Can't do PDF as we have no printer nor plans to get one. So I may just play with this pattern a little longer.

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  3. I think you do need ease at the hips and perhaps a little at the top of the arm? I can't really tell, but it looks like maybe it's a bit hard to lift your arms? The sleeve bottoms look really cute though and I can tell it's going to be a lovely blouse once it's finished :)

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  4. Thank you - I am going to play around with the pattern; someone has suggested looking at Gertie's site for underarm gusset info - who knew such a thing existed?!!

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  5. It's worth making again, I think it really suits you! You could just take some length off the hem to fix the ease across the hips problem. Definitely tucked in is best. Good luck with it if you decide to go ahead.

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