My London blouse! Mathilde Blouse in optical black & white fabric

I bought Mathilde Blouse pattern by Tilly and the Buttons this summer before holiday time. When I bought it I didn’t know I would have gone to UK on holiday…we hadn’t decided our holiday destination yet.

In middle August, at last minute, we chose to drive up from Italy to UK and have a ten days camping tour in South England …amazing!! Except the cold weather (probably the coldest days of this last English summer …we’ve been definitely unlucky with weather this summer), it was an incredible trip! I love camping and I love England! And English camping sites are amazing, probably the best I’ve ever seen. After 2 days in France (we were in Colmar and Lille), we drove up to Calais to take the ferry-boat to Dover. Then we went to Dover (White Cliffs are so nice!), London, Stonehenge, Plymouth, Hayle, Land’s End, St. Ives and Brighton.

In London, on a walk in Portobello Road, we came across a really nice fabric shop, The Cloth Shop. This attractive place is full of natural fabric, such as linen, wool, cotton for clothing and furnishing … obviously I fell in love with everything! 🙂 Unfortunately my budget didn’t let me to buy the whole store, so I went for this lovely printed fabric, a black and white cloth with little hearts that give it an optical effect, for some black buttons and for two floral printed cottons. Instead Filippo bought a linen to restyle two old chairs.

I thought straightaway that this black and white printed cotton and the black buttons would have been perfect for the Mathilde Blouse. So back home, I decided to make my London blouse! Ah, by the way, my mother’s name is…Matilde! 🙂

For this second sewing project I decided not to make a test version because I wouldn’t have so much spare time in evening over this month (I’ve just started to take evening sewing classes) and I didn’t want it to take long. Moreover I thought that, being loose-fitting, it doesn’t need to fit perfectly like a dress. So I went directly for the final version …practically this final version is my test version of this blouse!

I went for size 4 for the bust (even if it was a little big for me, but size 3 would have been too small) and 3 for waist and hip. I had to cut the edge of the sleeves by 5 cm each side because I didn’t have enough fabric (unfortunately I bought only 2 mt instead of 2,5 mt of fabric, as suggested on the pattern). I even realised that the fabric was very lightweight and more slippery than the previous cotton I used for the Peony Dress …in some steps it’s been difficult to handle.

Anyway, no problem with tucks and darts. I even made my first French seams and I love them! No raw edges visible from inside …nice finish, I like it!

Instead the buttonholes took me some more practise to understand how they works. Luckily my sewing machine has the automatic buttonholes foot, but in any case, to be completely sure, I made five or six test buttonholes on a fabric scrap before making them on right back opening. And then I managed to sew a (almost) straight row of buttonholes on my blouse! So proud of it!!! Sewing buttons on, instead, is so boring! And sewing them on in a raw has been pretty difficult. But in the end I managed to make it, more or less.

Then I had to adjust the gathering at the top of the sleeves two times because I had made it too tight the first time and I didn’t like the result. And in the end I attached the cuff bands to the sleeves…

I’m really happy with the final result …I love this blouse! I think it’s perfect for every occasion, both elegant and informal.

Here is a brief abstract:

• Pattern: Mathilde, Tilly and the Buttons. You can find really clear step by step tutorials on Tilly and the Buttons blog: www.tillyandthebuttons.com/p/mathilde.html
• Fabric: black and white printed fabric (bought at The Cloth Shop (www.theclothshop.net/).
• Buttons: black buttons bought at The Cloth Shop
• Modifications: I cut the edge of the sleeves by 5 cm each side

And here are some of my pictures of England…

White cliff in Dover

Hundreds of old sewing machines in London

Liberty in Tudor house in Plymouth (building dating from 1599)

The beach in Hayle … stunning, because I’d never seen an ocean beach before … It is so wide!

Sun and black clouds in Brighton…