Smock Blouse
I’m starting to think that I became addicted to garments and…
The “Stylish Dress Book” from Yoshiko Tsukiori it’s definitely my “guiding star” in this new sewing adventure!
This time I decided to try something that I truly love and wished to have more on my own closet, smock blouses! They are perfect for a casual spring/summer look and soooo comfortable.
You can find all the instructions of how to make on the pages 40 and 41. Once again everything was really well explained with plenty of graphics and illustrations on the “critical” parts. This pattern is a great opportunity to train some gather stitches and also have a very interesting double fold placket with buttons (I know, time to use that special button hole foot from your sewing machine girl!). I’m ok making the button holes using the sewing machine, it’s something that I always need to look again in the manual before I start because I don’t actually sew garments all the time. But, confession… I’m NOT ok by attaching the buttons with the sewing machine! Just the idea of the needle passing through the button makes me really panic. It’s like having a car that parks by itself, it will never work for me… I have trust issues ;) So I attached the buttons by hand.
I will come back to the buttons, but first let me talk about my fabric choice, “Plaid in Plum - Entwine Wovens by Giucy Giuce” for Andover fabrics that I get once again at Cottoneer Fabrics. It’s a magical fabric and I wish that I could have all the bolts from the entire collection (even the yellow ones, that are not my favorite).
Regular white buttons would be not so great with this fabric, so my first idea was to cover the buttons with the same fabric, but I wasn’t able to find my “cover buttons kit” in my mess, so the perfect solution for this kind of fabric is brass! The brass buttons are perfect for this situation.
It was the second time that I adventured myself with a pattern that does not include seam allowances. This means that I needed to include while tracing each template to the fabric, and in some specific templates they may vary.
Because it’s a “loose style” pattern I decided to use the smaller size and not my regular size.
The “fuel” (Swedish fish) and coordinated threads. This time I used Aurifil 50wt color 2260, but for the next garment project I will be using 40wt, because I believe it will make the seams stronger especially for neaten all the edges.
Happy sewing!
Carolina