My first Indie Pattern

Reading so many amazing sewing blogs has meant that I've been introduced to all these great indie patterns, which has been wonderful but also really, really bad for my bank balance.  However, despite buying a number of patterns that I've been really excited about I haven't actually got round to making any of them yet.  So last week I bit the bullet and just got on with it.  The one I started with was the Maria Denmark Edith blouse.  I love this style of shirt and as it only requires a metre of fabric I had (almost) the perfect fabric for it.  The fabric is a metre of this beautiful pink quilting cotton that I picked up a couple of years ago in Paris, it was so lovely that I couldn't resist but as I wasn't doing much sewing at the time, it has sat in my stash ever since.  I took it out a couple of months ago as I needed 25cm for a quilt that I'm making (anyone see the problem appearing).  The more I looked at the fabric, the more I knew I wanted an item of clothing made from it, enter the Edith blouse patten.  I laid out my pattern pieces and was just able to squeeze them into the 75cm that I had left, (with a little piecing for the collar facing), yay!

The pattern came together quite easily, although the instructions do assume a bit more knowledge than I was comfortable with.  It was fine but I did definitely need to go and consult the sewing books/google a little more than I would have liked.  However, I'm really pleased with my end result, especially as this is certainly one of the most structured things (particularly most structured collar) that I've made.  See what you think:

Sorry about the creases, I had been wearing it all day.

I extended the waist a little on this as clearly my waist is not as narrow as others with my bust size and I needed an extra couple of cm so that I was able to breathe, however, this came off without a hitch. The shirt is a bit shorter than I would usually choose but a) I totally forgot to add any length when playing around with the pattern and b) I would not have had enough fabric left to add it anyway.  This is what was left of my fabric once I was done cutting:

The pattern is a pdf, I love the instant gratification that this provides but I did not love having to add seam allowances to this one.  I have not invested in a tracing wheel and carbon paper as yet and so was laboriously adding them with my ruler and french curve.  Maria is really clear everywhere on the pattern publicity that you have to do this and I bought the pattern anyway, I loved it that much, however, I still want to know what is the point on not including a seam allowance on a pattern?


This is definitely a pattern I will try again, however as we appear to have jumped into a super cold autumn, I need some winter appropriate clothes so maybe the Edith dress in a wool crepe?