Sunny Resort Blouse Take 1

I finally got around to snapping a few pics of the shirt I made for myself using the freebie pattern from Adey of The Sew Convert found over at Grosgrain. I would certainly use this pattern again but I would choose a more flowy fabric like she suggested. I went with a quilting cotton for my first attempt because I didn't want to spend a pile of money on fabric to find out that the style didn't suit me.

I learned a few things while making this puppy:

1) Use double sided bias tape for the edging. The nasty woman I dealt with at the fabric store looked at me like I was an idiot when I asked whether she recommended single or double sided so I (stupidly) took her snapped advice of single sided. I'm not sure if you can tell from the photo but I used the single sided to edge the neck and it's wrinkled. I spent ages online trying to find a tutorial for using single sided bias tape after the neck difficulties and found nothing. In the end I found a few packages of double sided bias tape in my stash and used that for the rest of the shirt and five minutes later it was finished: easy peasy! I should have ripped out the neck and edged it with the double sided tape but oh well.

2) Remember to consider shrinkage when deciding how much fabric to purchase. Duh - this seems like an obvious thing to do but I didn't think of it. Thankfully I had a bit of cute purple fabric in my stash that worked out perfectly for adding some length to the shirt (actually I'm happy the oops led to this addition, I think it adds something to the finished product)

3) Don't make the belt and belt holes. I debated whether or not to add the belt and in the end I made one and added the holes to the shirt and I shouldn't have bothered. The belt looks super cute on Adey but it does nothing for my shape -- should have followed my gut on this one. Thankfully the pattern on my shirt hides the button hole belt loops pretty well so I can still wear it without the belt.

I would highly recommend this pattern to beginners. Super easy to follow instructions and a relatively quick start to finish project.