The Adrienne Blouse from Friday Pattern Company was one which I always had mixed feeling about. It was obviously really popular considering the number of versions I saw on Instagram and it had the big sleeve thing going on that I usually love and I was slowly getting to the point where I wanted to make one myself. I’d recently been feeling that I needed more jersey tops in my repertoire so when there was a little sale on over at Friday, I treated myself!

The Adrienne blouse has a fitted bodice with big gathered sleeves which are elasticated at the shoulder and cuff. It uses jersey of at least 20% stretch which I pushed a little with my own fabric choice. I used an old bamboo jersey from my stash which has a beautiful drape but probably not as much recovery as the pattern truly needed.

I made a large with no alterations to the size. The only change I made to the pattern was to create a skinnier channel for my shoulder elastic. I only had 5mm wide elastic to hand so I adapted the pattern to that rather than order more. To do this I sewed a second line of stitches 5mm from the folded edge of the shoulder seam, essentially making the elastic channel half the width as well as making a little ruffle along the edge!

It’s a nice quick sew – I’d recommend it for beginners. It uses simple techniques to make a stylish in trend blouse. I’m not sure how much I like the fitted bodice style on me (lockdown weight, am I right?) but it works well layered with other things!

The sleeves would definitely need shortening if I made it again. It’s at a weird point where it makes my arms look a bit short!