Recently I have been in the pursuit of recreating the blouse featured with the green flared jacket suit. Unfortunately the pattern in particular was not on the same card as the other pattern so that meant a little searching. Paging through the same 1940 book, I found a similar blouse (honestly I thought it was the one but it was not).
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| The Original Illustration |
Scaling out the blouse was the easy part then came assembling it. First, after putting the front together I felt that the gathers were not nearly as full as I thought they needed to be. The back gathered section thought was sufficiently full which you will see here in a little bit. Once it was put together enough to try on, I found that the front was just right. Throughout making it, I was not too happy with how it was turning out. First the front gathers were not full enough. Then, the sleeves were not my favorite, then this and then that. The list could go on, truly.
The pockets are faux pockets entirely. I added them because they looked like they really needed to be on a blouse like this. They turned out not too bad. I did the tops open just enough to pin in a folded piece of wide grosgrain ribbon in to match the image.
I placed mine a little differently as you can kind of tell. Once I had the pockets in, I hunted through my ribbon stash to find a little pocket detail to tie the whole thing together. I chose a scrap of brown grosgrain ribbon that seemed too perfect. I learned too that ribbon scraps, when used well, make great accessories. They cost very little and add a nice touch of color that can be interchanged for each outfit.
As for the back, the lower portion was set into a yoke and was heavily gathered as you can tell. I really love the back and the drama it has. Once the whole blouse was done, I set the blouse into a waist band to tuck in more easily. As a whole, the blouse turned out better than I expected and am glad that I finished it. I almost discarded the whole thing.
To complete the outfit, I wore the orange linen skirt, thick knee socks, and a low heeled shoe.
