This is item number 3 in my vintage challenge, so by my reckoning I am producing one a month, even though my pledge is to produce 5 garments this year – I always like to under promise and over deliver 🙂
This blouse pattern is McCalls 5512 from 1970. It was innovative back then in that it had 3 sizes in the one pattern allowing the maker to move between sizes.
Even though this is a vintage pattern, it has a fairly modern vibe with the little raglan sleeves which don’t close the armhole, just visible in the first photo.
I couldn’t resist posing at our local museum, with the local constabulary!
The fabric is a panel which I bought as a remnant from Potter’s Textiles. When I got it home and had a good look at it, I wondered why I had bought it, so ugly! I’ve had it on the cutting table with monotonous regularity and just couldn’t bring myself to make it into anything. I toyed with the idea of donating it to the local op shop, and in the end I thought I’d use it to make a muslin of this blouse. Then I kind of fell in like with it!
My favourite part though is the back view
I was pretty pleased with my pattern matching down the centre back, particularly as the back seam is curved, and the way I managed to get the dots on the sleeves and the collar.
The collar is much bigger than it appears on the pattern envelope, but I’m coming to terms with that.
Given that I’m stashbusting I decided to not buy buttons, instead fossicking through my button stash, which is considerable. In the end I chose the turquoise buttons that were in my Mother’s stash. I had wanted orange, so wasn’t certain about the blue, but actually I quite like them.
Pattern is McCalls 5512, from 1970
Fabric is a panel remnant from Potter’s Textiles
Buttons from my Mother’s stash
Jeans are Not Your Daughter’s Jeans, previously reworked