Refashion Friday Inspiration: Patchwork Back Button Shirt/ Blouse

Hello!!! I'm back! Massive thanks to the three super-talented bloggers who shared such awesome posts on this blog and generally kept my seat warm whilst I was away getting married and honeymooning. They did such an ace job, and in truth I'm a little intimidated to get back in the driving seat!

Now, I'm imagining that you'd probably rather be checking out pictures of my wedding dress and hearing about whether or not I bought half the fabric in NYC's garment district! My apologies but I require a little more of your patience, I promise I will start sharing those things from Monday, starting with the all-important wedding dress post. In the meantime, I'm going to get back on the blogging track with my regular feature: Refashion Friday.

So, please set aside thoughts of special glamourous dresses if that what you stopped by for, and instead take a look a these patchwork effect shirt/blouse remakes. They may look a bit crazy, but making something a bit crazy out of arguably the most boring type of garment out there (mens office shirts) fills me with glee! For these garments I used a really basic blouse pattern as a basis and cut up several unwanted mens shirts from which to cut out the various pieces. 

I cut the front of the blouses from the back of the original shirts by placing the centre front of the pattern on the fold, and similarly cut the back of the blouses from the front of the shirts incorporating the buttons and button plackets so the final garments buttoned up at the back. The original shirt hems were also included to skip the need to hem the final garment. 

The sleeves are 1940's style puff sleeves with a wide sleeve band. The overall fit of the blouses is fitted with waist shaping darts on the front and back, and that combined with the puffy sleeves and self-drafted Peter Pan collar produce an overall very feminine silhouette and feel which contrasts nicely with the traditional, male-centric origin of the fabric. If you ever checked out any of my previous shirt/blouse refashions, you'll know that I like playing with these gender contrasts when refashioning garments. 

I love the idea of wearing a garment like this to a job that requires you wear smart attire. It could be seen as a cheeky nod to formal working environment, plus you'd be sticking to the dress code rules whilst also bringing refashioning, sustainable clothing, creativity and 'hand-crafted' to the type of working situations that are rarely associated with those things.