Granville shirt and a skirt

Granville shirt from Sewaholic is nowadays my go-to shirt pattern. Before this pattern, I wasn’t very comfortable sewing a shirt, but the instructions were so detailed that I now have the instructions printed out and I usually look at them even when sewing shirts from other patterns.

I made this shirt from dark green poplin that has no stretch in it. I took the matching buttons from my old worn-out shirt that was on its way to the bin.

Sewaholic patterns are designed for a pear shaped body and I had to make some changes to make this shirt fit me, but now I have a pattern that I can use forever (or at least until my weight changes!). There are two things that I will still change when I make the next version of this pattern. Firstly, I think that the collar is a bit too big for me and that is one of the things I’m fixing if and when I make this pattern again. Perhaps I did something funny with cutting out the pattern since I really had to stretch the neck-opening to make the collar stand fit. Secondly I can see a little bit of wrinkling around the armholes and that means that the sleeve head is a bit too big for the armholes. That is not necessarily a problem with the pattern since I had to do some fiddling with the shoulder width.

I also have been using Granville pattern in other ways besides this. I have experimented in combining this pattern with the pattern Mélilot by Deer & Doe which is my other favourite shirt pattern, but that is a thing for another blog post…

I am also wearing my pencil skirt the pattern of which came from the bootstrapfashion.com. I hope that this link to the pattern works but you may have to log in to access the patterns. I like how the ruffles add a bit extra to the skirt and I think they suit me particularly since they sort of add an illusion of curves to my narrow hips.

The fabric is a ponte like jersey knit with a funky pattern. It is nice and stretchy and suits well for this skirt. I also lined the skirt with a stretch lining fabric. I put an invisible zipper at the center back but left out the button that is in the pattern and instead continued with the zipper all the way to the top of the skirt. The waistband is stabilized using a wide elastic band that runs around the whole waistband. Here is the skirt from the side (Btw. Posing for the blog pictures is hard! I am often my own photographer and after taking the pictures I noticed that my eyes were closed!)

Here are both the shirt and the skirt from the back. Sorry about the wrinkles.

And with the shirt tucked in.

Unfortunately my late-night snacking has been slowly showing up on my figure and this skirt beside its stretchiness is starting to be a bit too small (So much for the afore mentioned narrow hips!). It doesn’t really look so small in the pictures but in practice the skirt keeps riding up very annoyingly.

I uploaded this blouse to the Lekala’s weekly sewing contest and I won the second prize that was 3 free sewing patterns!

I went through the site and chose the following three:

1. The 1950s dress. This could be a nice summer dress for the sunnier days.

 2. A short sleeved blouse with a double front.

3. And finally this. A ruffled dress that is so on trend right now. I also think that I could use this pattern as a basis for a nice blouse, too.

I have been very busy creating my first ever sewing pattern for a little girls’ dress. This one. The pattern is now drawn and the instructions are ready in Finnish. Some lovely people from Finnish Facebook sewing group Ompeluelämää volunteered in testing the pattern in different sizes. A huge thank you for them! I will release the pattern sometime in the future in both Finnish and in English, but I’m not a native English speaker. If you are a native English speaker and want to volunteer reading through the instructions and correcting my language you’ll get the dress pattern and instructions before others! Just comment on this post and I’ll be in touch!