White Linen 1950s blouse

I buy quite a lot of white fabric, mainly because I enjoy printing and painting on fabric to create unique textiles.

The fabric I used to make my white blouse for the SWAP was in fact what I had left when I had made the YSL dress, featured at the start of my blog. It came from an expensive shop in central London and is top quality French linen. I bought it specifically because it is a nice optical white; not at all creamy. The shop don’t like to sell in less than 25cms, ie you can’t have 1.3m, and anyway when I made the YSL dress I had no idea how much I would need. So I bought much more than required, and had enough left over to make a blouse.

This top was a lovely straightforward make. I ironed out the crumpled, yellowed, unprinted pattern (just four pieces, as it has short kimono sleeves, and a shawl collar). I lengthened the body by an inch above the waist, cut it out and I marked the dart, button, button-hole, and stitching marks with a turquoise washable felt tip one Saturday afternoon. I sewed it up during the evening and found it a perfect fit – iIespecially liked the wide, released back darts, making a nice tidy back when tucked in, or left out. The collar has a cut-out “V”so appears notched, although it is a shawl collar. I added an additional button hole to the front as the blouse was a little longer than designed and found perfect notched buttons at Sharon’s on Clitheroe market. The fabric was very nice to sew and the pattern was a good fit. The button holer on my machine worked perfectly and I think I managed, at one stroke, to create both a blouse that I will enjoy wearing and to overcome my blouse trauma. Phew!