Messy Essy Makes...: Pattern Hacking – 3 blouse looks, $1 pattern!!

I just finished 2 different projects of the same pattern – somewhat hacked to create totally different looks. The pattern is Burda #128, a simple button up sleeveless blouse that I bought in their $1 promotion! Its my first print at home pattern and although not a fan of all the printing, sticking and cutting, for $1 I can live with it! Here is the pattern, I bought it because I love the neckline ! I don’t have huge amounts of time to sew so I like patterns I can do quick and I tend to sew a version of the same thing twice as I find once I’ve conquered a pattern I can do a second one much quicker & better – and I tend to make a few pattern adaptations so the end garment looks different.

Pattern pic

So how did I find the pattern? Its ok, but the instructions around sewing the neckline aren’t great. My top tips for this pattern are

For the neckline, the way the folds should look before you attach it to the back piece/collar is as follows. This isn’t how it looked when I followed the fold lines on the pattern, but with a bit of experimentation I decided this was right
The collar pattern piece is way too small. Cut it like 3 times bigger than the pattern (easy to trim it down when in place but you can’t make it any bigger if you follow the pattern)

I found it easier to make the collar front & back as one piece so you can just fold over
The collar piece attaches to the back with the short end, not the long end (why don’t patterns tell you these details!!)
When you attach the front to the back/collar, you want to sew in a straight line. Sounds obvious but with how the collar attaches, the temptation is to have an angle in it, but don’t keep sewing straight & trim off the excess
Ensure the collar piece extends beyond the front when you attach it the front so you ve something to fold over
Once you’ve got this bit cracked, the rest is totally straightforward!!

Pattern Hack 1: So my first project was to do the pattern without buttons. I have an aversion to sewing buttons & button holes. I’ve made a fair few mistakes sewing button holes in the past and I hate handsewing so attaching buttons isn’t my favourite task either. So for this one, instead of cutting 2 of the front pieces, I just cut it on the fold. This worked well, however for me the neckline was then a bit low & a bit baggy, never fear- I therefore folded it over a bit and added a button and was very happy with this ‘structural’ neckline that is quite distinctive! I added a small cap sleeve as I thought that looked best to balance out the neckline.

Note on this first one I made a mess of the collar. I cut the piece way too small so I ended up sewing a second collar totally over the first one to fix it. Anyway I think it looks ok and shows you can salvage it if you go wrong first time! I would have unpicked it but the fabric is a little delicate for that.

I m loving this one! Fabric is from Croftmill

Pattern hack 2: I totally love this Liberty feather tana lawn so this was my inspiration for number 2. I only had 1
precious metre so I needed to stretch it as far as possible. This time I did the button up version. Neckline was fine second time round as I started off with a much bigger collar piece.

My hacks this time were:

- Adding sleeves (I just took a sleeve pattern off another top that looked like it would fit and made the sleeves as long as I could with the fabric I had left!!) I found some binding in the perfect blue colour so used a bit of that as an accent around the sleeve (and inside collar)

- Detachable pussybow! This I’m super happy with & can’t believe I didn’t think of this before!! I love pussybow blouses but with a 1 yr old they are not the most practical as he tries to swing off them and they dangle in his face when I try to put him in & out of his pushchair!! So this was the ultimate solution & means I have 2 tops in one. I finished the neckline of the top as per the pattern then made the pussybow with just a very long strip of fabric. At the moment I ve just left it totally loose – when its worn on top of the blouse you can’t tell its loose and its easy to take off. But you could add a button at the back to hold in place if you wished! Here it is with & without the bow! Can’t believe I managed the entire blouse out of 1 metre!