The Edwardian Endeavour is still going on. I’m not aiming for true historical accuracy and am slowly making all of the parts of the full outfit. This means that I also required some clothing to cover the top half of me. Off to the google I went and eventually discovered the Beatrix Shirt Waist Pattern from Sense & Sensibility Patterns. I purchased it, got to work on the printing and started with some white fabric. I chose to make a size 14, back closing, front gathered, long-sleeved shirtwaist. Fiddling with the front top edge took about 15 centuries, because I originally wanted to pleat it to this example. However, I couldn’t get it to work without having to recut the pattern, so I decided to leave that until next time. Took it in along the side seams and shoulders and figure that I should make a size 12 next time.
Front 
Side 
Back
I looked at my stash of buttons and decided on a small yellowish button. Added two along the bottom edge of the sleeves and 18 along the back. I had 20 in total so that worked out perfectly well. The buttonholes are all hand-worked, which took absolutely forever, as you can imagine.
All the buttons (outside) 
Insides 
Front gathers 
Sleeve ends
Next to the buttons there are two straps to tie the blouse in front, allowing some blousing to happen over the skirt. I actually really like it. I did place the straps about 2 centimeters further down than the pattern indicated. The pattern seems to work pretty well, it has lots of options, of which I’ve only tried this one. I do expect to make another version of this – front closing this time. Reason being that back closing means that I need to do an actual workout when trying to put it on. I need to undo four buttons to get it over my head and then trying to do them up slightly out of reach while wearing a corset and other associated layers is difficult!
The things left for this outfit include making a corset cover and a hat (maybe), however next up, a cycling skirt!
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