Bow-Tied Blouse |

This week of Me Made May has been pretty good – I managed 6 me made outfits! My pledge was to wear me made things on at least 4 days, so I’m pretty pleased with 6! None of the outfits it especially exciting or different from things you’ve seen in weeks one and two.

Day 15: Parrot shirt refashion
with New Look skinny trousers and a trusty H & M cardi. (and a slightly stoned-looking photo!)

Day 16: Refashioned high-necked t-shirt
with Primark jeans and H & M cardigan.

Day 17: Emery Dress 2
with yellow H & M cardigan and mustard yellow tights.
I forgot to take a photo of this outfit, because it was the day of my nephew’s first birthday party so taking a picture of my dress wasn’t top on my list of things to do. It was an identical outfit to how I wore the dress in week one, so you can check it out there 🙂

Day 18: Gertie bow-tied blouse
with really old refashioned denim skirt (made from a pair of jeans).
This is the first time I’ve worn this basically since I finished it – I think this may have proved that this style and fit is not for me, so I think this may be on it’s way out of my wardrobe.

Day 20: Grainline scout tee
with New Look skinny trousers and a falling apart H & M cardigan. I intend to knit a cardi to replace this one as I love the colour, but I’m such a slow knitter, this will probably be string by the time I’m done!
Day 22: My first grainline scout tee and Blue Simplicity 2451 skirt.
It wasn’t really warm enough for bare legs yesterday, but I was clinging to the hope that Summer was here already! Sorry for all the pasty white flesh, though.

Only a week and a bit to go! I have a couple of things I haven’t worn yet, but only a couple of those are normally in my regular rotation of clothes. Things like my 2 Elisalex dresses never get worn and I don’t wear my bright yellow skirt much because I don’t like how it looks with tights – I guess it’s a Summer skirt, so in England that should give me a couple of weeks’ wear each year!

I finally finished my Gertie Bow Tied Blouse, which I blogged about wanting to make frickin’ ages ago! I bought the fabric in one of the cheap fabric shops in Walthamstow. The first time I went there (when I bought this fabric), I couldn’t believe a lot of the things were under £2 per metre! I only got a couple of things on that trip and one of them was this shiny navy blue teeny polka dot fabric. I didn’t realise it was so shiny as it was rolled with the wrong side out on the roll. I kind of like the shiny-ness though, which is lucky!

I think like the other bloggers who I’ve seen have made this pattern, I had issues with the neck being waaaay to small for any human! I measured it at one point and it was only 7 inches around – compared to my actual neck, which I’ve just measured, which is 12.5 in! I didn’t make a muslin because this fabric was cheaper than calico, so it seemed a waste of money and time to make one. So I just hacked at the collar once the blouse was mostly together. I can’t now remember how much I cut off, which is annoying because I wanted to make this again. If I make it again, I’ll re-draft the neckline to make it at least 12.5in round! I think I might make the neck tie a little longer too as I feel like the bow is a bit too small.

Apart from the neck causing me problems, the rest of the blouse came together really easily. It is made up of not many pieces, with the sleeves a part of the front and back pieces (so no annoying easing of sleeves into shoulders). The only reason this took me so long to finish is because I got to the point of only needing to hem it and do the button holes and sew on the buttons. But when I’ve done button holes on my machine before, they haven’t been great – mainly I think because I don’t have a buttonhole foot (don’t judge me, I’m going to get one…..one day!). But actually they were okay. I didn’t use the placements from the pattern, I just measured how long the back was and spaced the buttons equally, as I think some people mentioned the bottom button was a bit too high.

Looking at this photo, I think I need to alter the position of the neck-band if I make it again – when it’s done up, it’s all to one side!

I made a size 8 this time, but I think if I make it again I might cut out the size 10 instead as I think I would prefer the fit with a bit more ease. I think I would also add an extra inch or 2 to the length as although it looks okay with my new yellow skirt (blog post to follow), and with my jeans which have a fairly high waste, I think it might show a bit too much tummy with any bottoms with a lower rise.

(Sorry for the odd expression here – I look stoned!)

Overall, though, I’m pretty pleased with it. And I’ve worn it to work twice and got compliments on it both times, which is awesome, because then you can say ‘what, this thing – oh I made it’ and look at the look of surprise on their faces! definitely more of these to come!