Sewaholic Fan-Girl (with Bonus Muumuu Refashion and Franken-Pattern)

It’s no secret that I love Sewaholic patterns. As a pear shape, they fit me quite well, and I love Tasia’s designs. At the moment, I’m trying to focus on sewing comfortable, wearable and practical pieces for summer, so for my “Indie Fan-Girl” outfit, I reached for two of my favourite simple, versatile patterns: the Pendrell blouse and the Hollyburn skirt.

The blouse began its life as a muumuu, which I found at a thrift store. It was $5, and made from lovely floral rayon with the perfect amount of drape for this blouse.

Clearly, this wasn’t the most flattering look for me. After I unpicked it, it was basically two big rectangles and the yoke. I straightened the edges, and then just used it like any other fabric.

As much as I love the sleeve options that come with the blouse, they’re not very easy to layer over, so instead, I borrowed the cap sleeves from view A of the Alma Blouse. I’m really happy with how they turned out! It was a very easy switch, since the armhole of that view of the Alma is finished with bias binding, exactly like the Pendrell. I did the same thing when I made a knit Pendrell top.

I ended up doing a lot more hand sewing on this blouse than I anticipated, since I decided to slipstitch all the bias binding at the neck and armholes, rather than stitching it by machine. It took more time, but I’m glad I did – it gives such a clean look to the edges.

I also catchstitched the hem, after turning it up 3/4″ twice (rather than 1 1/2″ once). I think this is a neater finish than serging the edge, and the fabric is thin enough that it doesn’t show through.

The skirt was made from a lightweight 100% cotton denim. I made view C since I had already traced it when I made my first version, but I lengthened it by an inch, and added the belt loops from view A.

It’s a very quick skirt to make, although I took some extra time for hand sewing. I slipstitched the waistband after it was folded over, hand-picked a lapped zipper (rather than machine sewing a centered one, like the pattern suggests), and catch-stitched the hem after sewing on some contrasting vintage rayon seam binding.

Next time I make this skirt, I think I’ll use bias binding instead, because it was tricky to ease in the seam binding, even with the narrow hem that I took.

I really love both these pieces! I think that they look great together, but they will be very versatile when worn separately. I finished the skirt first, and I’ve already worn it lots!

For more details, visit my blog! I wrote separate posts for the skirt and the blouse, and there are more pictures on my flickr. Thanks for reading!