Edwardian Style Lace Blouse

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Lace blouses are pretty high up there with my favourite things to wear, which is probably why I keep on making them - I believe so far I've made a blue one, a brown one, a red one, and a black stripy one. I've also got fabric to make a brown stripy one, a black one, and a flesh coloured one. All of these have been reasonably similar in design - stretch lace for close fitting body and sleeves, with some kind of tie going on at the neck. But this time, I got my hands on some non-stretch broderie anglaise (provided to me by Tia Knight Fabrics in exchange for a post on Instagram) and thought I'd shake things up with another design.

Late Victorian/Edwardian lace blouses are things of beauty (see below for a couple of examples), so I thought it would be fun to use them as my inspiration for this project.

(1898 design by Paquin, from V&A collection)

(1908-9 from Museum of Arts & Crafts, Zagreb)

As much as I love fashion history, I'm afraid period costuming has never been my thing, so if you've come here hoping for some historically accurate sewing, you're going to be sorely disappointed - this is quite a loose interpretation of the concept of "Edwardian". I took some of the key design elements that seem to crop up time and time again, such as the high collar, yoke, and big sleeves, but overall went for something much simpler than appeared to be the trend at the time.

The design I ended up with was pretty much the same front and back - it has a collar piece (cut on the scalloped edge of the fabric), a front yoke, a gathered front piece, a back yoke, a gathered back piece, and leg o' mutton sleeves, all of which I drafted myself. There is no shaping around the waist, so this blouse is pretty baggy in its natural un-tucked-in state - it kind of reminds me of an old-fashioned night gown, just a lot shorter. Instead of hemming anything, I cut all pieces so the finished line would lie on the scalloped edge of the fabric, so the sleeve cuffs, main front and back pieces, and the collar as I mentioned before, all have this. This not only meant everything had pretty scalloped finishing, but it also meant I didn't have to spend time hemming anything, which was a double bonus in my book!

(front view)

(back view)

This fabric doesn't seem to fray, so you'd be fine leaving your seams raw - though they will be visible so you'd probably still want to trim them reasonably close to the stitch line if you went for that option. For the most part, I went for French seams, the tiniest I could manage, but for the armhole, I did just go for a normal seam with trimmed allowances, since armholes are always the most tricky part, so if there's a way I can avoid extra work for myself, I'm going to take it.

In terms of closures, there are 5 buttons up the yoke and collar piece on the right side. I used cover buttons* for these, and covered them with the same lace fabric, so that they'd blend in with the main garment. The original plan was to use two layers of lace to cover each button, but this created too much bulk to be able to seal the button up, so I had to go down to just the one. Since the lace is reasonably transparent, this does mean that the white of the button base shows through more than I'd intended, but at least it's a similar colour. I feel a near-compulsive need for things to be matchy-matchy so I often end up using cover buttons, but I have to admit, I do not enjoy working with them. I always end up getting attacked by the teeth, and they're just so freaking fiddly. I even bought a button making device* thing to make things easier, but I find it just makes things worse. I like the end result so it's worth it, but urgh I hate the process (anyway, rant over).

This was my first time drafting leg of mutton sleeves for myself, and I'm pretty hooked on them. I think they definitely could have had more volume - can you have too much volume when it comes to leg of mutton sleeves? - but I think they work just fine for this contemporary-Edwardian style. As per usual, I've not gone into too much detail into the pattern drafting/sewing up of the garment - if anyone is interested in a full on tutorial on how to do this, do let me know!

(Also the trousers are also made by me and can be found here)

This is quite possibly my personal favourite of all the lace blouses I've made. Perhaps that's the shiny newness influencing me, or perhaps it's that it's a different style from the others, but whatever it is, I'm so happy with it. The broderie anglaise works perfectly with this style, giving the gathers a wonderful amount of body, and the dainty embroidery throughout is so chic and elegant. I absolutely want to make more of these in different colours if I ever get through the million other projects I have on!

PS I've decided that photos have been too small on previous blog posts so I've decided to make them a little bit bigger. Let me know if this causes any load issues etc!