Penny for your thoughts

Sew over it published a new pattern about a week ago. It’s called Penny dress and it is another shirtdress and a gorgeous nod to the 1950s. What I really love is that this dress pattern turns into a blouse pattern with few simple modifications. What is even better, is that the women at Sew over it realised this and made a nice tutorial on how to do just that!

As I was still pondering whether to make a dress or a blouse I found this piece of black and white polkadot cotton poplin in my stash. I hadn’t bought enough of it to make it into a dress but I thought it would look nice as a blouse.

I followed the Sew over it blog’s instructions and added 5 cm to the length to make the hem reach to my waist and modified the pattern for the ties. This blouse was super fast to sew. I don’t know if I spend even 2 hours making although in practice I did not do it in one sitting.

The instructions were mostly clear. The only thing that bothered me was that that the centre-front wasn’t properly indicated. The instructions referred to the “centre-front notch” but there wasn’t really one. Also the fold line in the button band facing wasn’t marked which made it difficult to understand how the button band was really constructed. I think that the construction of the button band was much easier to understand when looking at the blog images.

I had some difficulties in attaching the collar that felt too big for the neckline. The instructions said that the collar wasn’t meant to reach the end of the neckline but the places where the collar was supposed to end wasn’t marked on the pattern, which was annoying, especially since my collar easily reached all the way to the edges of the neckline.  Finally I notched the neckline edge and did some slight stretching and managed to fit the collar like I think it was meant to be.

Then there are a few opinions that are not really critique. The hem of the dress and the top versions were just serged, turned and topstitched. I think this is a bit lazy way of sewing the dress even if I have occasionally used it. However I decide to turn the hem twice and topstitch after that to avoid the serged edge showing. Also I have had some previous experiences on serged hem getting caught on something from the loose threads and that is annoying.

I would also finish the armpit part of the armholes in a different way. I am afraid that making the cuts will make the blouse/dress less durable and lead to rips. If you’d just sew the side seams first and then turn the armhole edges afterwards the cuts wouldn’t be necessary at all.

However, I like the outcome very much. It suits particularly well with my Lizzie skirt.

My long torso is the reason for that the bottom of the blouse has some trouble reaching to my waist. However, for a relaxed summer blouse it doesn’t really matter. I was anyway planning to use it with high waisted skirts.

It has been raining almost the whole day but luckily enough the rain stopped for the evening for us to take the photos. Thank you for visiting my blog and have a nice Midsummer!