Hot Patterns AD Prudence Blouse

Why, oh why do I keep thinking I will like Hot Patterns? I guess it's because their styles are so cute. I had nothing but problems with this blouse. Many of the problems were my own fault, but there were some serious errors in this pattern in my opinion.

















First of all, as stated in my last post, there were problems with the back piece. Well, now that it is assembled, I can see problems with the front too. The sides near the arms need to be lifted up because there is an ugly horizontal "pleat" where there is too much fabric.


















If I were to make this again, which I seriously doubt I will, I would make a sloping shoulder adjustment. I don't usually have to do that, but this top really gaps at the shoulder. I would also narrow the shoulders as well.






And speaking of the arms, you will notice that mine has no sleeves. Well, the pattern for the sleeve has no notches or marking indicating which is front or back. So, I looked at the curve of the arms at the bottom of the sleeve and matched the steeper curve with the back, since that seemed to have a steeper curve on the bodice. When I tried to pin in the sleeves (the pattern says to match the top notch with the shoulder seam, but there are no notches!) nothing would line up. What I had determined to be the top center had to be moved way over in order for it to fit. Now, this should have been my first clue that maybe the sleeve was in backwards.




Also, the sleeves are put in flat, so there is no way to really tell how they will fit until after the side seams are sewn in. And, being the good seamstress that I am, I double sewed the seams. Well, when I tried on the top, the sleeves felt like they were in backward and I couldn't move my arms. So, I took the sleeves out and switched them and set one in with machine basting. This felt better, but as you can see in this picture, they look terrible. There was negative ease in the sleeve to begin with, and for some reason, it wants to dent in near the sleeve cap. It looked even worse on me than it does on Myrtle. So, I ended up removing the sleeves all together and binding them with bias tape.





The other thing I don't like about this blouse is the yoke application. It's cool in that you end up encasing the bodice without having to do any hand sewing or stitching in the ditch, but the problem with it is that you can't get a smooth finish where the yoke wraps around the bodice. You can see two little places where it pokes out just above the ties.











I really like the effect of the topstitching that I did, and I really wanted to do it on the sleeves... but I don't have any sleeves!











Well, the only picture I have of the finished blouse is this blurry one that I tried to take in the mirror. I will try to get a better pic. Even with the problems, I like this top and I think it will be nice and comfortable.