A Pink Pinstripe Ngaio Blouse

 Why did I buy a roll of 4 yards of pink pinstripe polyester suiting at Wal-Mart? Well, I had a new skirt pattern I wanted to try out, and I thought a pink skirt would be fun to have. Also, my fiancé said I had enough fabric and tried to steer me away from the fabric section, so of course I had to check out the fabric section, and when I found this pink pinstripe polyester, which would work perfectly for the afore mentioned new skirt pattern, I just had to buy it.

Anyways, I made the skirt, I love it, I have yet to get it photographed and blogged. Once that skirt was made, I still had a good 2 yards of pink pinstripes left. Not wanting to add any more fabric to my already bursting stash, I decided to turn that last 2 yards into a blouse real quick. After a mental trip through my pattern stash, I opted to use the Scroop Patterns Ngaio Blouse pattern for the project. With a couple minor additions. . .

The Ngaio blouse pattern has a couple different options, sleeveless (I made this option about a year ago, never blogged about it specifically, but it can be seen in this blog post.) and short, straight, sleeves. I picked this pattern for this project because I loved the 1930's inspired shape and the multiple cup sizes offered, however, neither of these sleeve options really appealed to me for this project. I wanted something more dramatic! So, I pulled out the 1930's sleeve pattern Simplicity released a few years ago and decided to have some fun!

I picked sleeve, well, the pattern envelope says it's A but the pattern tissue says it's C, basically it's the the puffed 3/4 length sleeve with the angled cuff, for my blouse. Previous experience with this Simplicity pattern has taught me that these sleeves don't generally allow for the best range of motion, so some sleeve cap alterations would be necessary. Also, I would need to make sure the sleeve cap would fit properly into the armscye of the Ngaio Blouse when all was said and done.

I pulled out the straight sleeve piece for the Ngaio blouse and looked at it. Hmmmm. . . I then pulled out the straight sleeve piece for the Scroop patterns Robin Dress and looked at it. The straight sleeve pieces in these two pattern was exactly the same. So, that meant the other sleeve option in the Robin Dress pattern, a flared short sleeve, should fit onto the Ngaio Blouse perfectly. 
 

The short flared sleeve had the same general pattern shape as the puffed sleeve from the Simplicity pattern - a sleeve cap which would fit smoothly into the armscye with extra volume at the bottom of the sleeve - it was just shorter, and better. Why was it better? The Robin Dress Flared sleeve had a lower sleeve cap. A lower sleeve cap generally gives a better range of motion. Thus, I figured I could graft together the lower sleeve of the Simplicity pattern with the upper sleeve of the Robin Dress pattern and get a sleeve that would fit smoothly and easily onto my Ngaio Blouse and have a good range of motion.

I folded down the too-tall sleeve cap of the Simplicity Pattern to get it out of the way. Then I laid the Robin Dress Sleeve on top of it, making sure to have what would be essentially the mid point of the two sleeve caps (halfway between the top of the sleeve cap and the underarm/bottom of the sleeve cap) at the same level.

Finally, I cut out the sleeves - around the top of the Robin Sleeve, down the side at a smooth angle from the bottom of the Robin sleeve to the bottom of the Simplicity sleeve, and around the bottom of the Simplicity sleeve.

Once that was done the hard part was over! It was smooth sailing, just one evening of sewing, to make the blouse. 

I followed the Simplicity instructions to make the sleeves and get that lovely angled cuff at the bottom.

I followed the Ngaio instructions to put together the body of the blouse, then sewed the sleeves to the body as easy as could be. 

The Robin Dress sleeve cap did indeed fit perfectly into the Ngaio blouse armscye. (I'll have to do some more Robin/Ngaio mash-ups in the future!)

I tried on the finished blouse and loved it! Mostly. . . I felt like it needed a little something else. . . Maybe a bow.

Yes indeed, a bow. I cut a strip of my fabric, sewed it up into a tube, turned it right side out, then slipped it through the little loop of fabric holding the front gathers of the blouse in place and tied it in a bow!

And with that, I had a new blouse I loved! And, all the pink pinstriped polyester suiting was used up!