A modified Roscoe Blouse in Liberty

December 7, 2020

Not sure about you, but a large chunk of my 2020 has been spent online. I don’t shop much anymore and I haven’t shopped much this year, but I have browsed much. VERY much. Perhaps even VERY TOO MUCH. I’m not even sure where and when I first came across the Doen Jane Blouse – Pinterest probably – but I saw it, loved it, and added to cart…several times. But I could never quite get across the payment line, and then I’d get those ‘Have you forgotten something?’ emails which could just as easily have said ‘You know you can sew this, right?’. And that’s what I did.

The make-this-shirt quest started with a pattern hunt. I really enjoy this part of the process – it always feels like a bit of a treasure hunt! I trawled all the usual pattern sites and haunts before realising that the True Bias Roscoe Blouse, with a few simple modifications, came pretty damn close. It’s a fabulous pattern, justifiably popular, and I can see it lending itself to so many possible hacks.

At about the same time as I settled on the pattern we received a delivery of Liberty tana lawns which included this dreamy Floral Edit (also available in these White). The Liberty website describes it as having been inspired by the collecting and cataloguing of flowers through photography and I love that because flowers and photography – two of my favourite things. I had sewn a Liberty shirt for my stepson just before I started on this project and oh my goodness, what a beautiful thing tana lawn is to sew.

I don’t always toile but this one I did, in a black cotton voile. I figured that if my practice version turned out ok, I’d probably want a black one as I always seem to these days.

Because this was going to be a button-up shirt which the Roscoe Blouse is not, I didn’t (as per the pattern) cut the front on the fold. Instead, I cut one pair and added 3.5cm at the centre front for my narrow plackets. These were just folded back twice to create a finished width of just over 1.5cm. I added a strip of lightweight BVM40 interfacing here too.

I raised the centre front neckline by 1.5cm.

To get more fullness in the sleeve I slashed in three parts, adding 4cm at each (widest) point.

The Roscoe Blouse features a closed sleeve binding but because I wanted the option to roll-up my sleeves  I added a sleeve placket (taken from the Grainline Archer Shirt).  This meant I had to add 2.5cm to the length of my sleeve binding for the addition of the button/buttonhole.

Pattern and fabric combined made this a very pleasurable sew and now I just want to sew EVERYTHING in Liberty. There’s a fair bit of gathering in the sleeve and necklines but in a lightweight fabric such as this, the tana lawn handles it magnificently.

Quality fabric like this deserves a quality label so I finished it off with one from the latest Sweary Sewist pack by Labels by KATM.

You can check out our full Liberty range here.