OK, so this is my second Colette Pattern’s Taffy Blouse. Straight after finishing my first, I made a start on the second. I wanted this one to be slightly longer in length and have a higher neckline. Rather than adjusting the Taffy pattern pieces I used the front and back body pieces from the blouse with collar in the Great British Sewing Bee book as I knew it had the fit I wanted, and combined those with the sleeve pieces from the Taffy. I also restrained from cutting this fabric on the bias as it has a directional print, and I knew the blouse would be large enough to pull on and off without being bias cut.
The fabric used was some I picked up for £1 from a car boot sale whilst holidaying in Brighton. It is totally synthetic and creases easily, but it drapes fairly well and I got about 3 metres for £1 so can’t really complain. I made my own bias binding for the neck and sleeve edges, however I couldn’t face making it up from same fabric as the blouse as it was really narrow. I measured it and found that I’d need to cut and sew together three strips of binding for each of the three edges (neck and two sleeves). No thanks! Instead I used some of the fabric left over from my previous Taffy blouse, which was lovely and wide so only needed one strip per edge. Much preferable:)
I liked the print of this fabric when I started cutting out, but part way through sewing the blouse together I began to think that it might look like a rather cheap and nasty uniform. Now that it’s finished I’m pretty confident that it doesn’t have that look – I think the style of the blouse and sleeves save it from looking too uniform-like. Phew!
