One Melissa, Two Melissa, soon to Three and Four

You know when you find a pattern that just fits.  I have quite broad shoulders and a long back, so usually have to tweek patterns to get them to fit, but not with Melissa, if fits straight off the printer.  I made a blouse and skirt with this patterm for Separates week over at The Monthly Stitch and decided to make another blouse for One Pattern Two Takes.  I previously blogged about my adventures with Melissa here.

The only fit issue I had the first time round, was it was a little loose around my waist and hips.  I remedied this by grading the seam allowance for 1cm to 1.5cm for the bottom 15cm of each seam and now it fits beautifully.  I had ironed this really, it just I'd been wearing it all day at work, hence the wrinkles.

The fabric I used was a man's shirt I bought from a charity shop and some white cotton from my stash.  It was a bright sunny evening when we took these photos and the colour has washed out somewhat, the stripe is actually very close to my skirt colour.  I decided not to include the back contrast chevon as I thought it might look a little busy, but did include the chevron trim on the pockets.

I utilised the original buttons and buttonholes from the men's shirt, which has lead to me being confused no end as the shirt buttons the wrong way.  When I do this again I will try and remember to cut the front upside down (provided it's not a directional print), to get the buttons to do up the Ladies way.

Making this for a second time, did make the process a whole lot faster.  The only fiddly bit was of my own making, as I had to bind the collar with a bias strip as I wasn't utilising the facings.

I already have plans to make this blouse again with some not so subtle red gingham for Check it Out Month. 

It's been really fun to participate in IMP2015, now I just have to keep up with the posting.

Today I will mostly be making seperates

If Me Made May showed me anything, it's that I wear mostly separates.  Out of the 31 days, I only wore dresses on 4 days, the other 27 days I wore separates.  I just find them much more versatile, I can happily wear the same skirt 3 days out of a week, pairing it with different tops, but would feel self conscious if I wore the same dress twice in a week.

So when The Monthly Stitch announced a Separates Week during Indie Pattern Month, I knew it was the challenge for me.  But what pattern to choose...  I eventually opted for the Melissa Dress/Blouse/Skirt by Muse Patterns.  I bought the pattern not long after release (unusual for me, I don't tend to be an early adopter), because the 40s/50s aesthetic appeals to me.

I keep trying to use fabric from stash, rather than going our and buying new and found a remnant of red denim that I have had for at least four years begging to be used.  The only problem was, the pattern calls for 1.8m of fabric either 114 or 150 wide and I had 1m of 1.2 wide.  A couple of modifications were required.  I decided to omit the button front and insert a side zip instead, I also omitted the centre back seam.  As you can see from the picture above, my Tetris skills came to the fore when positioning the pattern pieces.  I didn't think my fabric had any sort of a nap, but just to be on the safe side put all the front pieces in one direction and all the back pieces in the other direction.  I also didn't have enough fabric for a waistband, but as I'm not a huge fan of straight waistbands anyway, I opted to finish the waist off with petersham ribbon and a large hook and eye.

The fabric for the blouse is also from my stash, it's a dress weight cotton from Ikea, with a copyright date on the selvedge of 2007, so I've had it a while.  I love the pockets on this pattern, they may not hold a lot, bit I think the chevron details is lovely.  I replaced the button and buttonholes with poppers, partly because I liked the look, but mostly because my sewing machine has recently been having a strop whenever I try to do buttonholes.  My sewing machine has now had a service after 5 years of abuse and I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear is feeling much better.  There will be buttonholes in my future.

And just to finish a not great picture of my outfit but a lovely picture of the lovely Hagrid