One of my favourite Christmas gifts this year was some gorgeous musical fabric, from my boyfriend.  He thought it would be a good fabric to make another of my McCalls M6036 blouses and I couldn’t wait to get started.  I picked up some buttons and got to work.

There isn’t too much to say about the sewing, as I’ve blogged about this pattern twice before, only that it is proving to be a great TNT pattern.  Unsurprisingly, I completed this one quicker than my other two, even taking into account the time used to neaten the seams with my overlocker.  This was the first time that I’d used the overlocker on a garment and I was really pleased with the results, although it was very scary finishing that first seam – cutting and sewing at the same time, oh my!

Well, I ended up with another great blouse.

Jx

Since my first attempt at making a blouse (Red and White Spot Blouse) I’d always intended to make another, and this was the perfect first project for my new sewing machine.  It has an automatic button hole function, so I didn’t need to worry about creating them manually at the end of the project.

I had some skulls and flames fabric in my stash which would make a perfect rockabilly blouse, again using McCalls M6036 (size 22 – D cup).  I didn’t make any adjustments from the previous blouse, as I was lucky enough for this size to fit me straight from the pattern.  It took half the time that I spent on my first blouse, although it took over a month in actual time due to my busy schedule.

Everything went perfectly with this project – I believe that I have found my first TNT pattern.

Jx

For quite a while, I’ve been trying to find a replacement for a red and white spotty blouse that I wore until it fell apart.  I bought it several years ago, and I can’t remember where from.  The fit was great and it worked perfectly with my jeans and cowboy boots as a comfy rock ‘n’ roll outfit for gigging in.  This is the main reason that I have restarted sewing.  Although I had never made a blouse before, I was desperate to replace it.

Most of my sewing to date had been in straight lines, but in order to reproduce my much loved blouse I now had to tackle princess seams, a collar with collar stand, button holes and gathered sleeves.  If I’d thought about this carefully before ordering the fabric and McCalls pattern M6036, I don’t think I would’ve bothered.

In the end, I’m very pleased that I did bother.  It took me 25 hours from the opening of the pattern to the pinking of the seams, which is outrageous.  But I won’t have to trace and cut out the pattern again, and I have found a very helpful princess seam tutorial on YouTube that will speed things up next time too.  I was initially convinced that the princess seam pieces didn’t fit each other by about 2 inches.  I also won’t need to spend an hour figuring out how to create button holes manually on my mum’s old brother sewing machine – it’s simple when you know how.

I used size 22, with the D cup from the pattern with no adjustments and it fit pretty much perfectly.  I have quite a short body, so I was surprised that it wasn’t too long.  One of the things that I loved about making my own blouse, was being able to make sure that the button placement was conducive to preserving my modesty.

Making the collar and collar stand was really exciting, and I was very pleased with the ‘pointiness’ of the collar.  The hand sewing needed to finish the collar stand was a nice change of pace too.  And I love gathering! Doing the sleeves and getting them even was a real joy.

Overall, this was a great way to spend three days (although not all at once), and I have a fabulous blouse to show for my efforts.  That makes me very happy.

What was the first item of clothing you made?

Jx