Stella Blouse and a Little Announcement

STEEEEEEEELA!!!!! Now that I've gotten that out of my system, let's talk about my new Stella blouse.

I know it's cruel of me to parade completely awesome deep stash fabric in front of you. Especially if you'd just put it on your "to burgle list." Gotta act fast people, we be stash busting around these parts. If you're thinking, "Haven't I seen this fabric before?" then yes you are correct. I used the majority of the yardage in 2009 to make Burda 117 which I wore during Me Made May last year.

I started Stella in early December before everyone came down with germs. I "hilariously" set the sleeves in while the germs were over taking my body. Let me tell you, sick Heather can't set in a sleeve for shit. It looked like a drunk money had a go at the sewing machine.  In fact I'm pretty sure it was a drunk monkey that set those sleeves. Curse you drunk monkey, I had to rip those things out and do it again.

Happily the sewing goddess felt I'd paid my dues dealing with drunk monkeys and the rest of the construction went well. I even managed not to cut half my buttonhole threads when cutting out the button hole tab.  Take that drunk monkey!

Pattern
Stella from Bluegingerdoll

Fabrics used
Feather print was an Italian cotton remnant. The yardage originally from Emmaonesock.com
Black tabs are a stretch cotton twill, also a remnant.
In fact the only thing I bought for this project was the 7" invisible zipper. Go stash buster go!

Pattern changes/alterations
1. Normal 1/2" forward shoulder adjustment to shoulder seam and sleeve cap.
2. Normal 1/2" board upper back adjustment with added shoulder dart.
3. Sway back adjustment of 3/4".
4. Increased dart intake of back dart to 1 7/8".
5. Dropped the point of the front waist dart by 1 1/2".
6. Dropped the bust dart by about 1 1/4".  I just crossed out the existing dart, drew in a new one at my position and then trued up the side seam.

7. Dropped the armholes 1/2".
8. Added 3/8" to each side of the sleeve to increase the sleeve diameter by 3/4".
9. Lengthened the sleeve by 1 1/2" cause I was in the mood for 3/4 sleeves.

Confessions/Advice
1. After measuring the pattern I decided to size up from a 10/12 combo to a 12/14 combo. I like a little more ease in a garment where the fabric has no stretch.  This worked out well except in the shoulder area, which I should have kept at a size 10.  I completely forgot about fixing this until putting the blouse on to take these picture. Oops!

2. I've lost around 4 lb since fitting this blouse and it probably needs to be taken in a bit.

3. I recommend cutting down the seam allowances on the tabs to at least 3/8". It's much easier to sew a nice curve with smaller seam allowances. In this pic I've just cut them down on the the top side around to the notch. That way I didn't have to cut down my pocket edge that was already serged.

4. I ran into a problem with the front dart when pinning up the hem. I think the dart intake is a bit too big for the hem to sit flatly with you sew it.  Before you cut your real fabric I suggest you make a change to the pattern like this.

- Take the front bodice and draw in the hem line. 

- Fold the pattern up on the hem line and measure the difference between the dart lines.

- Adjust the dart legs so that they are closer to the width of the dart at the location where you fold it up. 

Husband Comment
"That's a nice utilitarian tunic with functional pockets. Feathery Heather.....those are supposed to be feathers, right?" I think my husband needs an education on what tunic is and only he would call this garment utilitarian.  However my new mini frog agrees about the pockets.

My Final Thoughts
This is a great design to showcase a bold print and it's super simple to sew. I'm also pretty exciting about it's hacking potential.  Muhaaa haaaa Plans!  But first I must raid that hidden cold war bunker to get the top secret pattern drafting book.  Operation Stella is a go.

Announcement
I'm pleased to reveal that Abby asked me to be a part of Bluegingerdoll.  She's still the designing brains of the operation, I'll just be taking a few housekeeping tasks off her hands. My main job will be generating content for the Bluegingerdoll blog. Tutorials, pattern hacks, stuff like that.  And of course I'll be sewing up all the Bluegingerdoll patterns, but I was gonna do that anyway.