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Esthers Anthea Blouse

It’s a mild weather day in October and all I’m thinking about is “Worktober”. Have you heard of this challenge?

“Worktober” is a month long challenge organised by Alexandria of @alexandria_arnold where we focus on handmade work wear. As someone who has worked from home since March 2020, I have enjoyed starting a job where I have to go into the office once a week. I absolutely love working from home and would never want to go back to working full time from an office. As a rule, I always shower and dress up before work starts, it puts me in the right frame of mind to tackle the day. But I love the excuse to make an effort once a week with my outfit, hair and makeup. 

My office has a flexible dress code so I can essentially wear whatever I want, within reason, of course. Even though I can just wear jeans and a tee, I prefer to dress towards the business casual end of things. I realise that even in my day to the day life, I enjoy a mix of formal and informal dressing. So all my “worktober” makes work perfectly in my out of office life.

One pattern that screams “worktober” to me is the Anthea blouse by Anna Allen. The blouse has a dartless bodice with amazing statement sleeves. This blouse is quite roomy making for an easy fit. The pattern creates the perfect marriage between formal wear and statement wear. This is now my fifth Anthea blouse and I have actually come to the conclusion that my preference for this pattern is a stiffer woven fabric like a cotton or cotton lawn. 

My body measurements put me between a size 6 and 8 so I made a size 6. I also graded from a size 6 bust down to size 00 down to the hem of the top, I really wanted to remove unnecessary volume. I also took out volume from the sleeves while also lengthening it to make a much longer. Finally, I took out a lot of volume from the sleeve cuffs. 

This pattern is generally an easy make and having made it a number of times, I knew exactly what to expect. The only thing I did differently, was attaching the cuffs. The instructions have you attach the cuffs to the sleeves right sides together then fold the cuffs in to the wrong side of the fabric, and topstitch, while hoping that your seam catches the cuff and the sleeve on the wrong side, as well as creating a straight seam on the right side. I have found that this rarely happens to me.

As such, I now attach cuffs with a method I learnt from Whitney of @tomkatstitchery. The right side of the cuff is attached to the wrong side of the sleeve. Then the cuff is turned to the right side and topstitched. All you need to care about is getting a beautiful seam on the right side. 

I really enjoyed making this blouse. Although, this is a viscose fabric, it was easy to work with. Cutting out didn’t pose any problems. The fabric has a slight crinkle look so it fits nicely with my laziness as it pertains to ironing. We all love pressing but hate ironing right? I only casually thought about pattern matching. For the most part, I enjoy how the pattern at the front flows even with having two front pieces. The ultimate test of an easy to sew fabric is when it comes to buttonholes and that was just a dream. My sewing machine did the heavy lifting but still, the fabric cooperated. I didn’t even test the buttonholes in advance and none of them needed to be redone. 

This is an absolute win in my book.