As the sunny weather persisted today, we took the opportunity to photoshoot my latest sewing make - a bow tie blouse.
A couple of weeks ago I visited Burda shop downtown and bought Burda 12 / 2025 and Nähtrends 03/2025, which is a German translation of the Spanish Patrones. One pattern attracted my attention in both magazines - a bow tie viscose blouse. In Burda the pattern was quite wide with gathered raglan sleeves, but the design in Patrones was sleek and fairly easy. I had never sewn with Patrones and was eager to try it, so the choice easy. An additional bonus was, that the pattern in Burda had a pictorial tutorial, which was actually an useful help for the attaching of the bow tie.
I'll start immediately with the bad news - the Patrones design is done inaccurately and incompetently. I've read plenty of bad reviews, that Patrones takes ready made clothes and provides reverse engineered designs for them, without testing. I have no idea whether these claims are true, but I can safely say - I wouldn't cut into expensive fabric to make a Patrones pattern, without testing it first on some cheap muslin.
My main complaints - the front and the back are very unbalanced and the opening for the neck is too narrow. The problem is, that the ease of the blouse is provided by the width of the front, while the back is quite straight and narrow. This makes the front much wider than the back and additionally limits the movement of the arms at the back in the shoulder area. This issue could be tackled by adding a yoke, but that would mean
more or less redesigning the blouse anew, which to be honest, I would
do, if I wanted to make it again.
The second problem, the narrow opening for the head, was not that difficult to address - I deepened the neckline at the back and shortened the width of the back shoulders. Still, I've never had such design problems with other professional sewing patterns.
Pattern: Nähtrends 03/2025 Blouse 23
Size: 36, modified
Fabric: georgette
Time to make: 9 days
My other modifications of the pattern: I shortened the sleeves by 3 cm to fit the length of my arms, I designed the bow tie myself and mine is cut along the grain as one long tie, without a seam at the back, I also changed a little the form of the side and hem lines, adding just a little bit of tailoring at the waist and some rounding of the hem.
Although the blouse was intended as a test item, utilizing the remaining fabric from my summer dress, I still decided to give it my best, so I made all of my seams French seams, including the pleated shoulder seams.
The bow is the main feature that attracted me to the pattern and I like its versatility - I can wear it tied, but the length is calculated to be perfect for wearing the ties loose as well.
Another feature I like - the sleeves. Surprisingly, given that they are the simplest possible rectangles with a sleeve head, but in this case, with the pleats I added, they work pretty nicely.
All in all - I am satisfied with the final result, mostly because I love the fabric. However, the pattern needs a lot of additional work to make it worth your fabric, so I would not recommend it.
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