McCall's M7838 blouse in Liberty Posey Polka Tana Lawn

I picked up this McCall’s M7838 blouse pattern in a sale last year and kept it in my collection until I found the right fabric. After venturing into Liberty over winter and seeing the Posey Polka Tana Lawn, I knew I had found the match. And it’s lucky I bought this fabric when I did since it now seems to be sold out. The lightweight, crisp nature of Liberty’s tana lawn makes it ideal for this blouse; it just sits so nicely. The front buttons came from my Fabric Godmother advent calendar, while I bought the gold cuff buttons from my local haberdashery.

The sleeves are made from three pieces

I made variation C, which is essentially a tailored blouse with bust darts, a back pleat, and the addition of a puffed centre sleeve to add some drama. The sleeves are made up of three pieces, rather than two, and involve extra gathering for the midsection. I absolutely love the sleeves and could make so many more of these shirts. I found the pattern quite easy to follow, although I wouldn’t recommend it to beginners. The one instruction I didn’t follow was to hand sew. For some reason, the pattern suggests slip stitching the lining of the back yolk and collar, and the edge of the cuff, but I instead chose to stitch in the ditch as I find slip stitching to be more visible than stitching in the ditch with my machine, and of course also a lot slower.

After finishing the blouse, I realised that I had accidentally sewn the collar right to the edge of the collar band when it shouldn’t go out as far so the top button can be done up. I’m not sure how I managed this one, maybe I didn’t follow the correct seam allowance. I’m contemplating whether to bother fixing this or just leave it since I’m unlikely to ever do up the top button anyway.

I adjusted the bust darts to be smaller by just using the dart from the pattern size that matched my bust measurement. This seemed to work fine so I didn’t need to make any complicated pattern adjustments. I would be tempted to try making this pattern without darts and just go for more of a loose fit, which would be nicer on a patterned fabric as unfortunately, the darts broke up the large polka dots on this print.

I’m loving this blouse and can’t wait to get plenty of wear out of it.