It is with immense excitement, and from the edge of my seat right now that I get to announce our very newest sewing pattern, the Sarah Shirt!!
Sarah is no ordinary shirt. Feminine and drapey yet chic and polished, Sarah is a button-up swing shirt with plenty of ease that clings and skims in all the right places. Choose from long, billowy sleeves and a dainty Peter Pan collar or short cuffed sleeves and a pointed collar.
Sarah is one of those patterns that we love more every time we make it! So elegant and flattering; glamorous and grown-up yet everyday wearable too. The full swing shape of this blouse means that it would also work beautifully as maternity wear, although probably only for the first two trimesters of pregnancy (and postpartum)!
Variation 1 features long, billowing cuffed sleeves and pretty rounded Peter Pan collar for seriously floaty ladylike glamour.
Variation 2 maintains its chic elegance but is edged-up with short cuffed sleeves and a modern take on the classic pointed collar.
Fabric recommendations & requirements
Light to medium weight wovens with drape and body will bring out the best in your blouse. Viscose rayon, silk crepe de chine, silk Marocain, silk charmeuse, sandwashed silk, lightweight brushed cotton, cotton voile, cotton silk, challis, sandwashed cupro.
Variation 1 (long sleeves) requires 2.1m / 2.2yds of a 60" width fabric, or 3.1m / 3.4yds of a 45" width fabric
Variation 2 (short sleeves) requires 2m / 2.15yds of a 60" width fabric, or 3m / 3.3yds of a 45" width fabric.
As ever, a massive and heartfelt thank you Anna Walker for these exquisite illustrations!
We've been very lucky, as ever, to have some super fabulous pattern testers on board helping us to achieve a pattern and sewing instructions that are as clear and concise, and typo-free as possible! Keep your eyes peeled for a blog post very soon with lots of glorious pictures of all of their versions, and on our Instagram in the meantime for a whole lotta Sarah spam...!
Sarah Sewalong
We will be hosting a sewalong for the Sarah Shirt launching on Friday 19th February. Expect the usual series of juicy in-depth posts as we nerd out on fabric recommendations, alterations, finishing techniques, embellishment and pattern hacking potential, step by step construction photos and real time help and inter-comment discussions.
In the meantime, we won't judge if you simply can't wait to get your Sarah and start sewing right now! You know how much we love to see your BHL creations so please share and tag away - use the hashtags #SarahShirt and #ByHandLondon and tag us both on Instagram and Twitter @byhandlondon, or share to our Facebook page.
Credits: To all the people who helped, contributed and made this process possible yet again - Katie Marcus for your beautiful diagram illustrations and InDesign expertise (of which we have almost zilch); Brooke Harwood for your super efficient photographic prowess; Sarah Martin for being such a wonderful and patient model & muse; and all of our wonderous, supportive, eagle eyed pattern testers (& more to come on them soon...)!
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Elisalex de Castro Peake
Comments on this post (7)
I just purchased this pattern and it is my very first PDF. Thinking of piecing the pages made me really hesitate, but I took to our local copy shop and had the pattern run off on “architect-sized” sheets and it is perfect. It’s very inexpensive to print those two large sheets and it allowed me to try a unique pattern that I otherwise might not have been able to get…
My preference would still be to buy printed rather than PDF’s, but it was simply and happily no big deal to run off the pattern papers in full size. Yeah!
— Marie Z Johansen
A lovely blouse, such a shame that it is only available as a pdf
— Sarah
Cute! I can’t wait to make this!
— Niamh
Hi Abs, yes we do still have the Orsola Dress waiting in the wings…. Don’t expect a release any time in the immediate future, but she will come eventually! Hope that helps! ~Elisalex
— Elisalex - By Hand London
Hi
Will you still be releasing the Orsola dress pattern?
Waiting with bated breath.
— Abs
So lovely!!
xx,
Catia
www.thepetitecat.com
— Catia
Congrats in the new pattern! I like the Peter Pan collar.
— Anabelle