Peplum Days - Sew Over It Ella Blouse

If you're anything like me you've got a bit of a pattern and fabric stash that always seems to grows.  One of my goals for this year is to end the year with less fabric in my stash than I started it with, its a good thing it's only March as I'm about 20 metres up.

I purchased some Gertie Rayon from Spotlight about a year ago and it's been sitting in my stash waiting for the perfect project ever since.  For a while it was earmarked for a wrap skirt, until I came to the realisation that I rarely wear skirts and I'd be better using it for something I thought would actually get some wear.

Enter the Sew Over It Ella Blouse, I purchased it last year either as part of the PDF Club or during a sale, I can't quite remember.  I traced it off not long after buying it but never got around to actually cutting out what I had traced, that is until Friday night.  I should have been doing some stuy but I really, really didn't want to.

It was actually a quick sew, I cut out the pattern Saturday morning and had it finished to wear for dinner that night even though I had lunch out and went shopping as well.  There are actually only 4 pattern pieces so it does come together fairly quickly.

I decided to add a peplum onto the bottom of the pattern as I don't really wear that many high waisted things and I love the look of a peplum.  I simply measured the bottom circumference of the blouse and then used the By Hand London Circle Skirt Calculator to calculate the radius needed for a half circle skirt.  I ended up adding a nine inch half circle peplum as that was as much as I could get out of the fabric I had (I purchased about 2.2m from memory).   Given that I added the peplum I added a button hole to thread the straps in order to allow them to still be tied at the waist.

I'm pretty happy with how it turned out and considering I'd been wearing  it for all day when I took these photos it wrinkles less than I imagined.  I also just noticed in this photo I never ironed off my marks from where I traced the peplum, oh well, that's life!

Anyway, I'm hoping to get a bit more sewing completed over the next few weeks, I've been sewing little things for a friends daughter and really enjoying the process but I'm actually hoping to try a few new patterns when I have some fabric arrive during the week, when I can fit it around some study obviously!

Pattern - Sew Over It Ella Blouse

Size/Changes - 16 I think, maybe it was a 14, added peplum

Fabric - Gertie Rayon from Spotlight in Navy ( no longer online)