The Menswear-Inspired Camas Blouse

Pattern: Thread Theory Camas Blouse

Fabric: 2 yds black ponte

Cost: $6 (got it on sale, baby!)

I often try to 'dress up' for work only to find myself reaching for my comfy knits and 'easy' clothes. This winter, however, Thread Theory came out with what could be the answer to my dilemma: the Camas Blouse. It's a cute blouse with a front placket, yolk, and gathers, but made completely in knits! Besides being super comfy, I love that knits don't wrinkle, making them super easy to wear (and 3/4-length sleeves are my fave!). Before this point, Thread Theory had been making exclusively menswear, so I was also super excited to try out some of their menswear-inspired women's line. Morgan sent this along for me to try out. 

This version is a bit of a tester. I am doing some blog posts now for the Thread Theory blog, and we wanted to try to make it up in a thicker fabric to explore how that would work. I do have some recommendations for sewing this up in a ponte, so you can find those tips here. 

I cut a size 4 based on my bust measurements, but I think I need to size down even more. Even though I trimmed the sides in at the hips, it is still a bit big in the bust. *Sigh* things always seem to be too big in the bust. Luckily, Thread Theory provides REALLY detailed finished garment measurements, so I'll definitely be using those in the future to resize a bit.

For this version, I fixed the gaping and tried to make the front placket lie flat by shortening the placket considerably at the neck. While the collar is designed to sit a bit away from the body, in a thick fabric like this I found I really needed to tighten things up and contour the placket to the back of my neck (see below). This helped considerably, but I think I tightened a bit too much in the front, where some puckers have now started to form. I have flattened them out in the top pic, but you can see them above.

The shirt does have some lovely details though. I made the gathers into pleats for this thicker fabric, and I really love the special little touches without it being overly feminine. I hope to make this again as soon as I find the right fabric!