I’ve seen so many tie front blouses with peplums and puffy sleeves over the last few years and thought it was time I made one for myself. I am a huge believer in using what you have, and so I looked for the key elements of the design and used a pattern I already had to hack it to the look I wanted. I ended up using my Protea sewing pattern as it has all the elements I needed – a bodice with darts, skirt and set in sleeve. It was incredibly easy and I made all the alterations as straight forward as possible using as many of the included pattern pieces to make life easier. You can find the tutorial for my tie front Protea hack on my youtube channel in the embed link below.
This was such a fun project and I really enjoyed making my new blouse. For the fabric I actually ended up using a really soft linen that was an offcut from Bunny’s new bed sheets! When i ordered her new bedsheets last year, the flat sheet that was included was one size fits all, which was really closer to king size and really overwhelmed her single size bed. It was annoying her, so i ended up trimming off the excess fabric which was about 1m in width and keeping it to the side to use later. I was so pleased when i realised that there was just enough of this lovely soft linen for my blouse!
One of the details I really love about this blouse is the placket facing. When i was gathering inspiration images for this project, every single blouse has a big gap down the centre front, and that’s just not my thing. I knew I wouldn’t wear a top with a gap, so I added a placket facing down the centre front and i’m so pleased with how it turned out. It functions perfectly, and i don’t think it detracts from the style at all.
I’ve been wanting to try physically planning out my projects this year. I’ve been using Pinterest for inspiration for a long time, but i’m finding more and more that I want to reconnect with the analog way of doing things. I’ve been really enjoying using my day to a page diary for most things, but thought it would be fun to try a project focused notebook. So whilst i was buying my kids the Writing Friend notebook from Creator’s Friend, I stumbled upon the Textiles Friend notebook and decided to buy one for myself and try it out!
I ended up documenting the process of trying it out for the first time and adapting the sections to my needs. You can find that video on my Youtube channel or watch it in the embed above. I’m looking forward to using it again for my next project.
Though I have my used my Protea sewing pattern as the base for my pattern hack, I’ve tried to focus this tutorial on general pattern alterations that you could apply to any pattern that has the same elements. Other patterns from my catalog that you could do this with include Darling Ranges, Dove and even the Durban Jumpsuit.
I hope you enjoyed this tutorial! I love my new tie front blouse and can’t wait to wear it more now that the warmer weather has finally hit Perth after a very long wet winter.
Happy sewing friends!
