Purple Blouse with Flounce Sleeves for Gaby

Last year in the section for precut small pieces of fabric and remnants in my favourite fabric shop I came upon a piece of very soft and beautiful cotton jacquard fabric and made myself one of my most favourte blouses, using a fairly fresh for that time Burda 12/ 2023  pattern. Not long afterward I found another piece of the same fabric and I snatched it for Gaby, planning to make her the same blouse.

However, when Gaby came for Christmas, she decided that she would prefer a more fitted blouse with interesting 7/8 flounce sleeves.

For the body of the blouse I used my tried-and-true Burda 6820, which I've sewn so far in plenty of variations - boat neck, henley neck, short, 7/8 and long sleeves, deep scoop and crew neck, almost every variation on the fitted T-shirt I could think of :) If I've counted them correctly, this is the eleventh blouse I've made out of this pattern!

As far as modifications go, this one was fairly close to the pattern. I changed the neckline, which I raised significantly and closed with a band and I took in the width of the shoulders by 1.5 cm, as Gaby has fairly narrow shoulders compared to the standard Burda model.

Pattern: BurdaStyle 6820

Size: 36, modified

Fabric: soft cotton jacquard, 1 m

Time to make: 3 days

The only interesting moment in this iteration of the pattern were of course, the flounce sleeves. I watched a couple of videos on the construction of such sleeves and in the end decided on the slash and spread method. I took a piece of paper, cut it in the form of a rectangle with length - the length of the flounce and width -  the width of the sleeve at the point of joining. Then I decided on the desired circumference of the hem of the sleeve, cut the rectangle in six pieces, spread them fan-like and the pattern of the flounce was ready - it's so easy. And because I'm a nerd, I even made a mock-sleeve out of a remnant fabric piece, to be sure, that I had nailed what Gaby had in mind.

I think the blouse came out fairly interesting and I actually plan to make myself a similar one for the spring/summer season out of light cotton-viscose fabric.