Sneak Peek: Pendrell Blouse

I finished my Pendrell blouse last week. I was hoping to take pictures of me wearing it but the weather hasn't been very cooperative, and I've run out of ideas for indoor pictures in our little one-bedroom...

So here's my version of the very popular Pendrell - or a sneak peek of it inside-out. It's actually kind of exciting to be sewing "local" as this pattern's designer, Tasia, also lives in Vancouver.

The pattern is super easy to put together, and it's a great project if you're a beginner, with still a nice original design.

I made french seams all around for a neat finish on the inside. The instructions were very easy to follow, although I would just do one thing differently: for the armhole binding, I would saw the biais strip's ends together, the same way as for the neck binding, and then attach it to the armhole after sewing the side seams together. That way the side seams are enclosed in the binding at the armhole and not sticking out...

I first cut a size 6, based on my bust size, but I should probably have cut a 4. This blouse is meant to be loose-fitting, so I was careful not to overfit it, but I have a rather skinny, even "bonny" figure - I'm not what you would call voluptuous - and on me loose might sometimes look like I'm wearing a sac. Fortunately, I had no problem tweaking the fit a bit to make it more flattering without overfitting it. I took 1" in at the armholes, tapering at the waist, I also took 1" at the princess seam on the shoulder, tapering at the bust apex in the front and the shoulder blade in the back. The princess seams made it really easy to adjust the fit, and in the end I'm very happy with how it turned out.

*Update*: As I'm writing my review on Pattern Review, I realized I actually traced a size 6 at the bust, a 4 at the waist and a 0 at the hips. This is meant for a pear-shaped figure, and I'm more of an hour-glass so I cut a smaller size at the hips.

The other change I made was to the sleeves. I was going to make view A, with draped pleated sleeves. But once put together the sleeves looked huge on me. I have very skinny arms, and it just didn't look right. I tried cutting size 0 of these sleeves, but i stil wasn't happy with the look. So I decided to cut view B instead. I recut the sleeve flounce in the same piece as the view A sleeve.

It looked a bit better, but I still wasn't 100% satisfied so I tweaked them a bit. In the end, I made them into little pleated cap sleeves, which I'm happy with.

It made me a bit sad that this sleeve design wasn't right for my figure, as I had seen so many lovely version of this blouse on the web. But in the end, it's still a very good pattern to have and the princess seam allow for many variations, so I am sure to use it again for other projects...