Tunisia blouse

I live in Norway, my youngest sister lives in Egypt. We've been joking for a while about meeting in Tunisia, then one day we realized we don't need visas to go there! So I grabbed my husband, she grabbed our mother and we did it! We met in Tunisia 😄 (you can read my impressions of that trip here, here, here, here and here 😊)

As you might have read before I started a tradition a few years ago to buy a piece of fabric from each new country I visit (if the opportunity arises of course), and the old market of Tunis did offer such an opportunity.

What I bought was a hand woven cotton/polyester mix that is normally used to make traditional Tunisian garments, this was meant for a short vest. I liked the color combination of it: the classic blue, red and white and I liked that it had tassels on the short sides. It didn't take long before I knew exactly what I wanted to make with it.

I wanted a blouse that is loose, with some sort of bell sleeves, a square neckline and a straight hem so I can use the tassels at the hem. This Burda Style pattern was close enough.

But a few modifications had to happen:

   - I made the side seams and hem straight instead of curved so as not to disturb the stripe directions. Read How-to here.

   - I ditched the gathered peplum and instead lengthened the front and back pieces with the same amount. This is simply done by subtracting the seam allowances from the peplum height and adding that at the bottom of front and back, since we don't need any for hemming either given we're using the fabric edge.

   - My fabric wasn't wide enough to leave the sleeve length as is so I shortened it a few cm's to fit into the fabric.

   - And finally replaced the gathered bells at the sleeves with pleated ones. Read How-to here. 

The sewing was pretty easy but the fabric did offer a couple of challenges...being hand woven it wasn't "geometrically correct", it wasn't symmetrical around the center, so I couldn't stripe-match, but it's not disastrously visible so I'm not too sad about that. And I found a little hole that I had to darn.

The result is 😍😍😍. I love it! It's almost that I wish the weather was a bit cooler so I can wear it! Not that I'm complaining about the weather, it's been Norway's best summer ever!

This is also my first July entry for #burdachallenge2018 and my 5th of 9 of Make Nine 2018 😊

Pattern: Burda Style 03/2014 #119
Fabric: Handwoven cotton/polyester mix from the markets of Tunis.
Photos taken at home in Asker, Norway.