Thief. Pirate. Devil.

The blouse was worked entirely by hand, and most of the construction details, such as the standing collar, sleeve plackets, and yoke, were new to me. I gathered, stroked, and set-in the gathers from the front, using techniques outlined in Agnes Walker’s Manual of Needlework and Cutting Out. The long side and arm seams are mantua maker seams, which sewed and finished the seams in one pass. Both techniques were also new to me. I used the 1908 Countryside Blouse pattern from Truly Victorian with practically no adjustments. I used different front and back sizes and started with a mock-up, but found I only had to adjust the neckline and collar slightly. The fabric is a swiss dot cotton voile, with contrasting quilting cotton at the cuffs. There is fusible interfacing at the cuffs, collar, and button band; I wanted to use sew-in but couldn’t source any in time. The thread is silk, and I used a glazed cotton basting thread for basting and gathering threads. The back is gathered to a small band on the inside, with ties attached to hold down the back of the blouse. Instead of turning out a long narrow tube, the ties were folded and whipped from the outside. I used a similar technique on the cuffs, first attaching the inner and outer cuff to the sleeve before whipping the two cuff pieces together. The collar is done in the same manner. The blouse is finished with a narrow rolled hem.