Linen Merchant and Mills Florence
I made my first Merchant and Mills Florence a while ago and while I absolutely love it, the maxi length makes it a bit impractical for my day to do life. So I thought I'd make another, shorter one.
This fabric is a lovely linen viscose that's a new fabric for Minerva for their Minerva Exclusive range. It's so nice to wear, quite light and soft but substantial enough to feel comfortable and to press nicely. It does fray pretty easily so really important to finish all the edges quickly.
I absolutely love the print of this, the way it is so large scale and involves so many different shades. I had a hard time picking a thread colour, because some of the areas are so different. I want for a mid green in the end.
In terms of the changes to the pattern, I shortened it, just by filing over the pattern piece. I also added pockets, using the pattern pieces from the Homer and Howells Cissy. Whenever I've added pockets to things in the past I always ended up putting them too low, so I tried really hard not to this time, and slightly overshot the target. It's just a smidge too high to comfortably stretch out your arms into them.
The other thing to report about this is that this is the first time I've managed to successfully make all buttonholes with the automatic buttonhole maker and without having to unpick, place differently, or finish off manually. There's only three of them but it's a miracle nonetheless - I've made a denim jacket since and it was right back to the previous buttonhole nonsense for that. The buttons are just from the button jar and again it took me ages to settle on a colour. I decided on the end to go for whatever blended in best, which is this soft yellow.
Also I made a tote bag with the leftovers!
Factual details as usual
Pattern: Merchant and Mills Florence
Size: 16
Fabric: Minerva exclusive viscose linen. I had 3 metres, but managed to get the bag out of it as well
Adjustments: shortened length, added pockets
