Fibre Mood Norma Blouse

Keeping with my custom of dragging reluctant family members around fabric shops when I'm on holiday, my auntie and I visited Le Marché Saint-Pierre together. It's one of my favourite shops in Paris' fabric district, a few years ago I bought the fabric to make this skirt and this dungaree dress from there. On my most recent trip, I bought a gorgeous grey and white gingham fabric which I used to make a pair of Lander Pants. It's a really big shop with about four floors and we found a lovely selection of floral cotton prints on one of the floors. I offered to make my auntie a blouse out of one of the fabrics, and after hesitating between this fabric and one with blue, purple and pink fabrics we left the shop with 1.5m of floral cotton as well as the gingham.

What really made this blouse come together was the fact that we'd been to Rouje the previous day admired their collection of blouses. They really do have the most lovely ready-to-wear clothing, but it's also very expensive! Judith (my aunt) especially liked the Julie blouse (now out of stock) and when we found this floral cotton print the next day I said I'd try to recreate it. The main features of that blouse we'd seen in Rouje was a v-neck with buttons, gathered sleeves which ended just above the elbow and a small peplum at the hem. I immediately thought of the Fibre Mood Norma Blouse which had the same neck and sleeve details, albeit no peplum. I was initially going to try and add the peplum on, but in the end I decided to just stick with the pattern as I Judith couldn't try it on for size while I was making it.

The sleeves on this pattern are what really sets it apart, I love how they're gathered at the end with a cuff to finish it off.

There was a lot of gathering involved in this make which I don't mind too much but definitely wouldn't have enjoyed if the fabric was heavier weight. Luckily this cotton was perfect gathers and it was a really enjoyable sew. It's also heavy enough to give the sleeves some structure so they stand out when being worn.

In the end, the only adjustment I made was to lengthen the bodice by 4cm which was pretty easy to do. The hardest part about making an item of clothing for others is them not being able to try it on, so I took lots of measurements when I could to compare them to the pattern size chart. 

This was my first time using a Fibre Mood pattern, I purchased it from the Foldline who have a PDF printing service. The best part was that the Foldline added on the seam allowances, it's a bit annoying that Fibre Mood doesn't do that!

Although this wasn't intended to be a birthday present I finished it around the same time as my aunt's birthday, which was a nice coincidence! I really enjoyed making this and would happily make another Norma Blouse, maybe one for myself next time. 

Judith, je te souhaite un bon anniversaire et j'espère que tu aimes ta nouvelle blouse!