I Am Patterns irma sewing pattern review

Apr 21

Apr 21 I Am Patterns Irma

I've had this I am Patterns Irma on my list to sew for a long time (think years), I'm not quite sure what made me pick it up now after all this time, but I'm glad I did.

Weirdly, most of the people that have made this that I could find were quite small, I would have thought it would appeal to those of us who are larger and go in for the oversized pottery teacher look. Maybe because it is SO oversized, particularly round the bottom.

The fabric is a Minerva exclusive cotton sateen, which I think might be my favourite of their fabric bases - I've previously made a Zadie with it - it's quite light but just weighty enough to feel covered up. The print name is Looping Light, big swishy brushstrokes.

I made the size 44, my bust measurements put me in the 46, but there is a lot of ease around even the bust (loads of ease elsewhere obviously) and I think it's perfect.

I find this quite a hard thing to sew, I haven't made a lot of shirts, and I needed to really take my time to understand the instructions. I mainly sew on a Monday, my no working day, and it took me four mornings to get this done. The two bits where I got stuck were with the front hidden placket, and the sleeve placket. This instructions were great though and I really felt like I learnt stuff. I will always do the buttonholes early on now, so much easier when it's just one flat piece, rather than wrangling a whole garment

I didn't make any adjustments with this, other than to omit the very top buttonhole on the collar stand. My machine is kind of temperamental with the buttonholes and when it didn't work after two attempts, I decided to just leave it. I don't tend to do up even the next button down, so it won't make any difference to wearability.

It is very very swishy, which is super fun, but also it is a lot of fabric. The low hi hem is very pronounced, it's basically knee length at the front, and long at the back. I'm going to see how I get on with it, but I may end up shortening the curve at the back a bit.