The Sassy Librarian Blouse

Today, I’m very happy to be reviewing another Craftsy class that I had the pleasure of watching; my post is sponsored by Craftsy, but all opinions are my own, and I made the garment from the class by my own choosing because I wanted to be able to write a worthwhile post, and I think it’s always worthwhile blogging about a sewing finish. 🙂

The Craftsy class that I took was called The Sassy Librarian Blouse, as taught by Christine Haynes, garment pattern designer. This class is approximately 6 hours long (broken up into 13 lessons) and is presented in video form. The pattern pieces to make the blouse are provided, which you print out on your home printer and tape together before cutting the templates out (it was very easy, although many pages but not that big of a deal). If you’re not familiar with Craftsy, it is a site where not only you can purchase pdf sewing patterns from independent designers (TONS of them are free too!!), but their main clout is that they provide ON-LINE video classes (a few free, but most paid) that teach you how to either learn a new skill or to make a specific project. Once you purchase a class, it stays in your account forever, and you may watch it at your convenience. The Craftsy platform is great because you can also ask (and see what others are asking) a question of the teacher and they will reply right there on the sidebar of the video screen. It’s just a really great learning community.

Anyway, back to my review of this class! The Sassy Librarian Blouse is a garment that I would not normally sew for myself. That’s not to mean that I don’t like the pattern, of course not! I do not own one collared or button-down item (besides a cardigan) in my wardrobe. It’s just not my regular style, but I know gobs of people who would love to own a cute blouse like this! But that is precisely the reason why I wanted to take this class. Since I don’t normally spring for something like this, I wanted to make it so that I could gain more sewing experience with buttons on a garment and with putting in a collar (which I’ve done one time before, I believe).

This class was great. Again, as with the other Craftsy classes that I have taken, Christine Haynes (the teacher) makes no assumptions about whether you have sewn a garment before. In fact, based on the information presented, it is assumed that you have never sewn a garment and will need to know about things like what type of fabric to use, what fabric grain is, what tools are helpful, what interfacing you’ll need, etc. However, some other classes on Craftsy are more advanced and do make some assumption that the student understands how to sew garments (especially the classes that go over details such as necklines, etc specifically) – rest assured, they don’t only cater to newbies. 🙂

So what I liked best about this class is that, even though it is one pattern, there are a multitude of style options that you can mix or match to get the exact blouse that you want. View 1 is the blue blouse, and it consists of the collar, a plain front of the shirt with darts and release pleats, sleeves, and the buttons and back of the shirt are the same for both versions. View 2 is the gray blouse, and it consists of pleats down the front, no collar, no sleeves, and the bow in the front. For my blouse, I chose the collar and sleeves from View 1 and the pleated front from View 2 (no bow). The class samples were made using quilting cotton, but I chose to use a voile (what I used is an ‘Indelible’ voile by Katarina Roccella for Art Gallery Fabrics).

As an interfacing nerd, I always appreciate when a pattern designer gives interfacing it’s due attention when explaining a pattern. I think garment newbies will benefit a lot from the initial explanations in this class, especially to interfacing and fabric grain. When I started sewing clothes, all I pretty much knew about fabric grain was that the little arrow on the pattern piece was supposed to be even with the selvage of my fabric. For whatever reason. But it was nice to see Christine’s explanation of grain and to illustrate on her body why grain was important when sewing clothes.

I utilize darts in a few of my bag patterns, but all of my favorite dress patterns use darts, and it’s something that I specifically look for when checking out patterns for myself. Because I like to work with quilting cottons with not as much drape as some other fabrics, I appreciate darts being able to give the body a more tailored look. I usually use a couple of photos in a bag pattern to illustrate how to sew a dart, but for a garment newbie it’s great getting Christine to walk you through how to sew a pleat and a dart in this class.

I’m not going to mention what all of the lessons talked about, since that would make for an extremely long blog post, but I will mention that I also liked being able to see, in this class, how plackets are sewn. Because this is a button down blouse, it cannot be hemmed like you would normally hem a dress. In this photo that I snap-shot from the video, Christine is showing the front facing of the blouse and how to make and sew that placket.

So, back to my blouse! Besides mixing and matching from each view (which Christine urges you to do if you so wish), I did not make any fit modifications to my blouse. It’s probably hard to see from my photos since I used voile, but there is a dart in the front (maybe you can see it in this photo right near my bust where my sleeve line hits). I have never used them before, but there are release pleats at the front and back of the blouse to sort of bring the blouse in at the waist; maybe you could see from my very first photo, how it sort of comes in right near where my belly button should be and flows back out toward my hips in a pleasing manner. I felt a little skeptical about the release pleats while I was sewing them because it felt odd to me (you’re basically sewing 2 almost parallel pinches of fabric, whereas for a dart you’re sewing a little triangle), but looking at the finished garment on myself, it does what it’s supposed to do.

I would like to mention that although I chose to use the sleeves for my blouse, if you have never ever sewn clothing before, either a) opt for the sleeveless version, or b) set a dedicated time out just to work on the sleeves. Of course, Christine’s teaching of putting in sleeves is fantastic, but they’re not the easiest to put in and they take a bit of finesse (in any pattern), so if you were new to this, I wouldn’t, for example, work on this for 4 hours at night and then decide to do the sleeves right before bed (as I did, finishing up at 1am, lol).

My only frustration (and this is not the pattern designer’s fault) is that besides the pattern pieces, the only other pdf material provided for the class is a document that discusses the supplies needed and the components to View 1 and View 2. This class looks like it was filmed in 2012, and I bought a class that was released last month, and the newer class provided sort of a Cliff Note/shortened text version of the pattern to go along with the filmed class. Of course I realize that the point of Craftsy classes are to provide several hours worth of footage so that the teacher can guide you through making the project, but since I already knew how to do a lot of these techniques, I just felt a little anxious to move on; but I did watch the entire thing front to back because frankly for things like the seam allowance for sewing the pleats, there’s no way I would know without watching, and seam allowance for pleats in a garment are pretty important, lol. But yeah, that’s just me. I admit there were several areas that I did watch several times as I either didn’t know how to do them or I appreciated the in-depth explanation and needed to see it again.

But anyway, I highly recommend this class! It is presented in a way that is great for learning, it showcases many different garment-making techniques (collar, pleats, plackets, darts, release pleats, sleeves, bias finish for the sleeveless version, garment facings, buttons, hemming, etc.). The finished product is beautiful and I am very pleased with the look and with the fit. If you would like to sign up for The Sassy Librarian Blouse class, Craftsy is pleased to offer my readers a special discount on this class. Just click this link and you’ll be able to read the details about the class before you buy, and see the discounted price.