Wearing History Smooth Sailing Blouse Wearable Muslin

For a while now I have been on the lookout for a good button down vintage blouse pattern. The success of my Third Time Lucky Blouse is going to mean M6696 is going to be made a lot more as a blouse, but I had also had my eye on Wearing History's Smooth Sailing Blouse for a while. There are so many great versions online, and I loved the notched collar, and the shape: great for tucking in at the button and blousing on top. Some of my favourite versions: Emileigh's V-J blouse and Welmoed's beautiful white version.

I bought the PDF back in November during the Black Friday sales and it sat on my computer for months, until I printed it off at my Mum's place last week. Before cutting into all the good blouse fabric I have stashed, I decided a test run was in order. I used this lovely floral queen sized doona cover I picked up at an opshop a few years ago. It's an IKEA one, 100% cotton, and it's lovely thin and breathable fabric. I also had a lot of it, so any mistakes didn't mean loss of precious fabric.

I cut a size 36 bust with no alterations and the fit is rather spot on (for reference, I am a 34 bust, but my waist/hip measurements are larger proportionally. I didn't have to grade out the hip area on this, but only just.) The whole pattern went together really well. The collar was nice and easy. I used this tutorial which was really straight forward. My attempt isn't 100% neat, but it's on the under collar, and I was treating this as a wearable muslin. None of the seams on this are internally finished either. The buttons are just small clear ones from the stash.

The sleeves are the only things I changed. I originally used the sleeve from the pattern, with cuff. Had it all finished, popped it on, and it looked bad. The shoulder gathers, the large collar, and the puffed sleeves were not doing my shoulders any favours, and my husband thought it all looked really off in the shoulder area. I took out the sleeves, and replaced them with the cap sleeve from M6696. And issue all fixed. These are now my go to sleeve pattern. I just sewed the in using a 1/2inch seam allowance per blouse pattern.

I am so happy with this, it is incredibly comfortable, and very wearable. I was going to get photographs of me wearing it, but it would take a while to get that organized (no good photo backdrops at home) and I wanted to share this sooner rather than later).

And this counts as vintage pledge item 2! I wonder how many I will end up making?