I recently picked up a copy of Weekend Sewing: More Than 40 Projects and Ideas for Inspired Stitching by Heather Ross. It is a beautiful book packed full of inspiration and some practical sewing projects as well. While there are a few that look a little more involved than a weekend, at least for what my weekends are usually like, there are a number of projects I am thinking of tackling starting with a peasant style shirt called “Summer Blouse.”

When I first took a look at this book, I was puzzled by the weird drawings in it that supposedly (or at least I thought) you would use to cut the patterns out. I didn’t realize that all the items that required patterns were included in two different pulled out sheets located in the front and back of the book. Even then, though, when you first take a look at one of these, it looks like a crazy map to nowhere.

There were lines everywhere! And, the instructions in the text about how to tackle this sucker were less than crystal clear for me. Finally, I came up with an idea that seems to have worked so far. I took a highlighter and drew around each piece. (The blouse pattern only has two pieces.) If you look closely, you can see the sleeve is highlighted with blue and the bodice is highlighted with orange.

Then I took some white tissue paper I had in my wrapping paper stash, placed a piece over the highlighted areas, and used a pencil to trace around it. Now I know I could have used a tracing wheel and tracing paper, both of which I have, but I was concerned that if I goofed up I wouldn’t be able to just erase my mistakes. I’d have to get an entirely new piece of tissue and start over again. And, I had some success!

I ended up having to use two pieces of tissue for the sleeve, but my one piece perfectly fit the bodice. Here are the tissue pieces I cut out after tracing. They are on top of a cardboard cutting board, so they may be a little difficult to discern right away.

I think I already have some fabric that should work for this, so I’ll let you know how it goes.