How to Make an Edwardian Flannel Blouse

An article in the magazine Der Bazaar or The Bazaar declares 1897 that blouses are now presentable, especially when combined with a simple skirt, a flower or a belt. Since I have made some skirts now, it is time to make some upper garments and I thought I start with a blouse, since I'm not yet keen enough to try something really tailored. In the French magazine La Mode Illustrée of October 1908 I found a blouse with a pattern of my liking and it was called Simple, so I thought it might be a good idea to start with that one. The description says it is made of flannel and lined. So I went to my local fabric store and bought some flannel, since I wanted to feel the material first. I couldn't imagine the feel of it, since I only know flannel as fluffy material and I was quite surprised about the touch, it is way softer than I thought. Then I went on and tried to trace the pattern pieces and make a 3D simulation of the blouse. I usually start with tracing every piece, marking all the lines and trying to make it as close as possible. Then I simulate the clothing and see what is going wrong on what fits, where I have to change things and that's basically the digital mockup I make. And of course it's easier to see what I'm doing without all the lines. It would just not work. The sleeves were strange and the front kept looking strange too. The description wasn't helpful either. For example the sleeve is too small in comparison to the corresponding lining and the front creates a big bulk when I shorten the whole thing 5 cm as it is written in the constructions. And the cuffs don't work either. I decided to call it a day and not to think about it. That didn't work at all. So the next morning I sat about and read some chapters of the book Ich kann schneidern in English it's I can tailor. It's basically a sewing manual from 1909 and I actually found the solution to my problems. First the sleeve pattern is only one part of the entire sleeve and one has to add another sleeve. Now it's a complete gigot sleeve that was never mentioned and I assume all pattern pieces I need would be mentioned. This also solved the things going on with the cuff since there is now enough material to make the pleats at the upper side which before was just not possible. The cuff is still strange in relation to the description since it should be 8 cm wide but I have no idea how this will be resolved. I will test this making the mock-up I guess. The second problem I had with the bulky material at the front was solved too. First it is apparently normal to end the lining 5 cm above the actual hem and cover it with a lace. This should avoid any unnecessary bulk at the waistline. Then I was confused about the fact that the front is loose since in pictures of the time it seems really put together at the front and I assumed that this must be in some way fixated and it turns out it was not or not necessarily. They give in a book the advice that one should pay great attention on how to style the front of a blouse by pulling it out more or less. But you should not pull the front out too much since that would create an unsightly profile. So this is solved and I can go on and make the mock-up since I am pretty sure that the back and sleeves will need some adjustments. Honestly this is already more difficult than I hoped it to be. I printed the pattern pieces, glued them together and cut them out, the first steps as always. And before I forgot it I also made a quick note on each piece so that I later will still know what pattern it is and how often I need those pieces in the fabric. I usually attempt to skip the step which is off you for future me. Now it was time for the mock-up and it took so much time. I tried to make the mock-up as neat as possible so that I won't have any differences to the actual blouse. And with the very first mock-up I already noticed that for example the sleeves are way too small and also the back pieces don't fit at all. They were just way too narrow under your arms and the armholes weren't fitting at all. I have spent an entire week fixing problems, making things worse, correcting it, going back to the very beginning and then starting with a better understanding of what I have already done. Welcome back! It's now one week and 26 mock-ups later. I had to do so many alterations and I did so many mistakes and I don't want to show it to you because it's so annoying. At least to me because I made so many mistakes and back and forth so this is half of a mock-up which actually fits. I will have to make it once again one last time to see if now really everything fits. But I think I will give you a short overview what were the main alterations. So first I had to take away a lot of material here because as you can see on this side there was always a fold. This is now a really small one but there were very big ones. Then I had to raise the collar, add a dart here because I couldn't manage all the material going on here. Then I had the problem that here the seam was always a little bit under strain. So I added a little material here or basically at the cap of the sleeve here. Just one centimeter or so and that made it. All the alterations I did here had effect on this line. So I had to add some material like so, so that it is straight again. And I had to make a slant to this seam line and set it back because it started to end up like here. You can see it here, it's still a little bit too far at the front. Then the last thing you can see here is a big hole. I did some alterations to the sleeves but they were wrong. So I had to cut this open so that it fits again. So this sleeve is basically all the same apart of this little addition of two centimeters or one centimeter of material up here. And that's basically it. And now we'll transfer the pattern of the mock-up to the paper pattern and then do a hopefully very last mock-up. I think I will only make half of a mock-up or at least only one sleeve because then I do not waste that much material because these sleeves take a lot of material. And still I can see if it fits but I don't like wasting any more material because I already laced it a lot. Finally I thought I'm good to go and cut all the pattern pieces out of the actual fabric. Actually I had to sew the pleats into the fabric first before cutting out the pattern pieces so that I won't waste any material. And I was so lucky that I just had enough of it. Sewing the pleats was quite straightforward but challenging at the same time. I used the spacing tool on my machine and each pleat should be a centimeter wide. Apparently the authors of the book Bechkernschneidern are right when they say that it takes quite some practice to sew neat pleats. If you look closely you will realize that at one side the pleats are a little wider than at the other side. This was the side I did first. And I didn't redo it since the flannel isn't forgiving when opening a seam. One would have seen the old seam lines and I thought that would be worse. Once all the pleats for one piece were done I cut it out and proceeded with the next piece. In the end I just had a few scraps left over. Then it was time for the assembly, starting with the lining. I worked the bodice and the sleeve separately so that I could hide the seam allowance between the lining and the outer fabric and just had to take care of those at the armhole. The blouse has some gatherings at the arm and the elbow so I worked those with the machine and made two lines of really big stitches which I could then pull in and create those gatherings. I then secured them with some needles so that they have the exact size I want them to. One quick note about the fabric. I used the term flannel which is not quite right. Nowadays we usually call a fabric flannel based on its construction, so this fleecy touch. But back in the days flannel was made of wool and the cheaper one made of cotton was called flannelette. The latter one caused some trouble since cotton fabric is more likely to catch fire than wool and with open flames it was quite dangerous to those who assumed it was wool. Today we buy flannel and it's almost always made of cotton. But luckily accidental catching fire isn't that much of a risk anymore. The main body was sewn quite quickly, those are fairly simple seams which I did with the machine. Still I made sure to not rush it and take my time for each seam and pressing them carefully so that really is a neat work. Then I pinned the lining and the main fabric together especially for the sleeves so that I could gather them at the exact same length and sew the sleeves into the armholes. Here I went into some troubles. I broke three needles shortly after each other. All the needles were somewhat damaged all prior of sewing so I opened a new package. Then my problems were gone and I could sew on without any problems. I removed the gathering stitches at the outside so that they won't be visible. Then it was time to make the collar. Here again I followed the instruction of the book and closed the seam of the bodice with the machine and worked the collar by hand. This has the advantage that you could sew or hook the collar temporarily in. In my case I decided to sew the entire thing in and not go for the exchangeable version but I wanted to use the same technique for the construction. The collar is made of two layers of fabric, one with pleats, the inner one without. And the inner piece is additionally stiffened with interlining. I chose to use a simple cotton fabric which I secured with a felling stitch. Then I added the outer pieces by ironing it in shape and then felling it onto the inner piece. In order to be able to sew the collar in I finished the front closure or better I had to adjust it first. I have basically sewn the bodice together but along the way I made a mistake. I somehow sewed the pleats on the wrong side of the fabric so that the left side is now the former right side. So this whole thing which was meant to make the button closure is on the wrong side. So I'm thinking that I will cut off the excess fabric here and will add it here so that I really get these buttons on the right side. Because I always tend to close it like this and I think it would really be annoying to have it changed and every book calls for doing it the right side wrong. So I think I have to do it on the right side. So I proceeded and cut off the excess fabric, added some lining fabric which is just a white cotton and basted it into place so that it won't move while I fell it onto the fabric and then I sewed it in on one side with the machine and then after that sewed it to the lining on the other side. Here I used a stitch only catching some threads on the one and the other side in order to make it almost invisible. After this was done it should have been simple to sew the collar onto the bodice but this was when I realized that something was amiss. Somehow the collar was too short. I assumed that the slight alterations on the front and some inaccuracies transferring the mock up back to the paper pattern caused this. But I was lucky and my boyfriend came up with the idea of adding a same colored patch at the back in order to elongate the whole collar. First I wasn't pleased with the idea but picking up my scraps I thought I could elongate the pleats of the back into the collar and this was just enough to widen the whole thing to the right size. I almost faked like a surgeon. Finally the collar was set in and there is only half a centimeter missing on the inner part. Now the outer appearance was almost complete but I refused to deal with the cuffs and instead finished the armholes by covering the raw edges with the bias tape I made of the lining fabric. I pinned the tape into the armhole and then sewed it on on one side and on the other side I used the felling stitch to secure it. Since I was already in the vibe of making bias tape and finishing the raw edges I also finished the hemline. Since the lining is 5cm shorter than the actual fabric I sewed the tape only to the main fabric. I also realized that I hadn't thought about the seam allowance which peaked out of the lower section and decided to secure them by overcasting them. I'm finally at the point to do the thing I'm so much looking forward to. Since I started this project I'm looking forward to add the lace to the bottom. The lace was correctly chosen. I wanted something narrow and simple and then I sewed it right to the edge with a running stitch in white yarn so that the seam isn't visible at the lace. Then there was almost only the cuffs left. The reason why I had put this off so long is that the sleeves have this slight bend which gives an entire different feel of wearing it. I'm definitely not used to it and I find it quite difficult to decide if it is done right so I was afraid that even with the mockup I might have mistaken it. But I mustered my courage and started by sewing the cuffs together. I proceeded almost like with the collar but didn't use any additional lining fabric since with the collar I realized that the two layers of fabric are already quite stiff and I wanted the cuffs to be stable but not rigid. I had to sew three pleats to the upper sleeve so that the entire sleeve fits into the cuff. Instructions about this were given in the original pattern description but were still quite vague so I guesstimated their width and their placement. Then I attached the cuffs to the sleeves and started by sewing them to the upper fabric, once again following the instructions of the book. Then the last step was to add the closures. I wasn't really pleased with the buttons I had at hand so I went and bought some green ones and after talking to my friend Clara I decided to not make any buttonholes but make the buttons fake and closed the lows with some hidden hooks and eyes. Mostly because I didn't want that many buttons for an aesthetic reason but the security of many points of closure. I sewed the hooks and eyes in and then added the buttons to the upper part of the blouse which won't disappear in the skirt. Then there were only the buttons for the cuff left and added some crochet loops in order to close them. This gave me a little additional width of the cuffs since they were somewhat tight. Lastly I added a big brooch shape and this blouse sample on flanel was finished.