The Last of the Bridesmaid Dress Fabric: Smoothsailing Blouse

 I finished this blouse a few weeks ago, and am so excited to share it with you!

When I bough the fabric for my bridesmaid dresses, I bought ten metres of this great green and pink floral cotton, for $60. From it I managed to make three bridesmaid dresses, a full skirted M6696, and now this Wearing History Smooth sailing blouse. The fabric is now all used up, except for scraps, which will find their way into little projects. Five garments from one fabric purchase must be setting the record for frugal sewing!

The Smooth Sailing blouse is now my go to blouse pattern. My wearable muslin turned out so well, I didn't make any more alterations. For reference, I swapped out the sleeve for the one from M6696.

The buttons are a nice ivory colour I found at the local fabric shop, love how they blend in. I had a lot of trouble doing the buttonholes, til I realised I hadn't popped in any interfacing! It's easy to forget when there is no separate button band. After ripping out two or three wonky button holes Ijust put a little piece of interfacing behind each button hole, and then they went in perfectly. Was so relieved it wasn't my machine mucking up on me.


The skirt here is another recent make, but it doesn't deserve it's own blog post. The pattern is vintage Simplicity 6862, my perfect skirt pattern, and it's made from a nice black polyester like fabric. My RTW go to flared black skirt didn't sit on my waist, so this very simple skirt is now my most worn wardrobe piece. I bought a lot more of this fabric, and am going to make a basic black pencil skirt soon.

And how did I go with Me Made May? Not as well as I would have liked. The weather here in Sydney is unnaturally warm at the moment, so most of the month was my general mix of handmade dresses and blouses, a good few which I documented on Instagram. I didn't get to test out my winter wardrobe as I would have liked to. It was good to see though that my summer wardrobe is 90% me made. I also didn't get my winter sewing done due to time constraints, but hoping to get to that in the next few weeks.

I will hopefully have some more items to share in the coming days; I am using this small stint of warm weather to photograph some other finished summer items.

What have you been sewing lately? Have you ever made more than one item with the same fabric?