Jayne’s Ida blouse!

4th February 2020

My Beautiful ‘Queen of Heaven’ Ida Blouse.

So, I am into my second year into my handmade wardrobe journey and I am loving every second of dressmaking. I am so enjoying working with different fabrics and trying out new patterns.

I am an old-fashioned girl at heart and love the soft muted colours of yesteryear mixed with the classic styles. I love wearing separates, especially blouses, and love to mix n match my clothes so I get the most use out of them.

When Caroline and Fliss from Felicity Fabrics asked me if I would like to use one of their fabrics for my next project I knew which one I would choose.

I chose The Lady McElroy, Queen of Heaven, which is a viscose crepe. It’s just the most beautiful fabric I have ever worked with. I knew that it would be just the perfect drapey fabric to use on the Ida Blouse by Ikatee Couture.

It arrived packaged in the most beautiful way! Wrapped in tissue paper in their logo design box. And even included a fabric swatch card with all the fabric details written on! Just gorgeous!

The Ida Blouse can be made with 8 variations on length, sleeves and neck finishing’s and is classed as an easy to intermediate make. I do think though that its more on the intermediate side, especially with the ruffles and stand collar.

I chose the blouse length with long sleeves and all the ruffles. I do love working with ruffles and I just thought that if I was using such gorgeous fabric then I had to go all out with the pattern too!

With its blush pink background, delicate blossom flowers, leaves and amazing peacocks I knew it would be perfect for this blouse. I love working with viscose as it’s got such a lovely drape and fluidity to it and the crepe just gives it a lovely texture too. In fact, it’s very reminiscent of vintage bark cloth material, which I love, but much softer.

So, I opted for the blouse with all the ruffles as I just had to show off this fabric as much as possible. It’s a very elegant pattern design which deserved an equally elegant fabric. The blouse has a deep yoke at the front and the fabric just flows beautifully from it.

Whist I was working on it I just knew it was going to be one of my favourite sewing makes so far. It’s just me through and through, from the stand ruffle collar to the pretty key hole opening on the back to the delicate colours in the fabrics.

The material handled and stitched just perfectly, although it did try to fray a little, so I handled it with care whilst stitching the ruffles.

I do love wearing blouses that have a high neck or collar as I do tend to feel the cold easy. The neck on this pattern is just so pretty and feminine and sits just at the right height for me. I was a little apprehensive when adding the collar stand as I didn’t want to get it wrong and then have to unpick it. So, I just took my time and really enjoyed the challenge and the fabric behaved just perfectly.

I even made a fabric covered button and handstitched button loop for the back opening as the back of the blouse is just as pretty as the front. If I can find any excuse to do some hand stitching then I will as there is nothing better than working with a needle and thread in my hand. It brings back happy memories of my Nana teaching me to sew on a button.

The only alteration I made was on the sleeves. The pattern calls for either classic straight long sleeves or kimono style short sleeves. I opted for the full length but thought they were a little too plain for such a beautiful blouse. The sleeves were quite long on me, so I used the extra length to create a gathered edge using thin elastic threaded through a narrow channel. I think these pretty sleeve edges just finish the blouse perfectly.

The Ida Blouse, with all its ruffles and gathers is such a great sewing pattern. But depending on what fabrics you choose it can become a real statement piece. And my version is just that because I chose this beautiful, soft, buttery and elegant Lady McElroy fabric from Felicity Fabrics.

I have been wafting around in the garden wearing it because I love it so much. I can wear it obviously dressed up going out for dinner but I can also dress it down with jeans and loafers. Making a perfect wearable piece to add to my handmade wardrobe.