Celebration Belcarra Blouse

Isn’t funny how haphazardly we discover things? Partway through Me-Made-May, I was lamenting my lack of warm weather pants and decided to research potential sewing patterns. I had read about Sewaholic’s Thurlow Trousers, so I looked them up online. While I was poking around the website, I stumbled across a new shirt pattern, the Belcarra Blouse. All thoughts of sewing pants swiftly fled my mind. I had also been on the lookout for an easy but flattering shirt pattern with sleeves, and I was pretty sure I had found it. In my haste, I bought the PDF version and spent an hour taping together the numerous pages instead of buying the physical pattern and waiting for it to arrive via snail mail. While the page margins were rather large, the printing instructions allow you to only print what you need, which I liked.

View A called for 2.25 yards of fabric for my size. I was hard pressed to find that much of anything in my stash. Luckily I had received 3 yards of Celebrate by Hoffman Fabrics as a gift a while back. Since Sewaholic Patterns are drafted for a pear-shaped body, my measurements matched one of the sizes almost perfectly, and my hopes were high as I cut out the pattern pieces. I was not disappointed.

Several steps in the instructions called for partial seams, which I am not particularly fond of. I am, however, uncommonly fond of French seams, so I decided to see if I could made this shirt with all French seams. It got a little dicey where the cuffs meet the sleeves under the arm, but it turned out well enough in the end.

In fact, the entire shirt turned out well! The neck is a tad wide, but the pattern itself is so quick, I had no problem making a couple adjustments and whipping up another one right away. More on that later. For now, all you need to know is that the Belcarra Blouse is my new favorite pattern. Sorry, Wiksten Tank. Belcarra has sleeves.