Double gauze cotton felt so nice to wear as a long flowy skirt, so I thought I’d try making a loose-fitting blouse with it. Here I share my sewing pattern and experiment.
Pattern
This first pattern makes a smock blouse with 3/4 length bell trumpet sleeves.
When cutting the fabric, two pieces were folded over in half with the top 2cm folded downwards to make a reflective seam allowance for the diagonal bits.
For the sleeves this time, I kept the extra 12cm that was cut off the bottom, just in case I want to add it back on later to make this blouse long sleeves.
Steps
This fabric was tricky to serge as a singular piece, so the top edges of the 4 pieces of fabric were folded over by 5mm and sewn in preparation for an elastic casing later.
The bottom of the sleeves were double folded and sewn by about 5mm.
Two elastic strips (6mm wide) were cut to 30cm lengths. 25cm of it was marked evenly into four sections, leaving 5cm to hold onto when sewing. The sleeve fabric was also marked evenly into four sections, 10cm above the bottom.
Using a zig zag stitch, the elastic was sewn onto the sleeves, pulling on the elastic to match the marked spots.
This made a shirring effect on the sleeves to make bell/trumpet cuffs.
All four pieces were serged together along the diagonal edges – front to sleeve, sleeve to back, back to sleeve, and sleeve to front.
The sides were serged together, from the end of the sleeve inwards then down to the hem.
About 1.5cm was folded in at the neckline and sewn all the way around, leaving 2cm gap to insert elastic.
About 90cm elastic was inserted through the gap; the knot placement was adjusted while trying it on.
Once the elastic inside the neckline was adjusted to fit, the bottom of the blouse was hemmed (about 5cm this time).
Alternative sleeves
I liked the look of the bell sleeves, especially when the blouse was tucked inside a skirt, but the sleeves felt a bit annoying. So, as expected, I ended up taking off the zig zag stitches that held on the elastic strips, added that extra bit of sleeve material I kept earlier, and reinserted the elastic strips into the cuffs.
This Japanese style smock blouse is actually pretty cute, and the sleeves are super practical.
If it was made from scratch, the pattern would look like below.
Useful links
Yan shares a dress version, and Usako has a pattern calculator for a smock top.
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