Today, I’ve got a couple of Petula shirts (or Chemise Petula) by Republique du Chiffon to share with you. And, keeping it an all-French affair, they’re both sewn in Atelier Brunette viscose.

Just a word of warning, although I really adore these finished shirts, this is gonna be one of those blog posts where I complain!

Possibly quite a lot!!

Cuz that’s just the kind of experience I’ve had with this one.

But both of these shirts are completely awesome and all’s well that ends well!

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The Petula Shirt Pattern

The Petula shirt is an oversized short-sleeved shirt with pretty details like gathering along the front and back yoke and a beautiful cuff. It’s been on my “to sew” list for a long time based on lovely versions I’ve seen online.

Now, before going to deep into rant mode, I do feel that I should point out that Republique du Chiffon’s patterns are at the more inexpensive side of the indie sewing pattern scale, at least if you are purchasing in an electronic format.

So perhaps some of the following is to be expected when you are buying a less pricey product.

But, having said this, there were plenty of things about the way the pattern is set up that drove me nuts.

The first one, which would have been a deal-breaker for me had I realised it before purchasing, is that there is no copy shop/A0 size available. It comes only as a print-at-home pattern. In addition, it comes as a single file in which you receive a PDF which has the English instructions, the French instructions and the pattern itself all as one huge document.

Finally, it comes using solid coloured lines only to distinguish between the different sizes of the patterns.

Alright, where do I begin here.

Perhaps with a moment of temporary pretty detail distraction:

Ok, here goes with the rant. First, I think it is not that uncommon these days for people to not have a printer at home, especially if they can usually access one at work. I do have a printer but it’s very basic and can’t really handle more than a couple of pages without meltdown, which has meant that now that working from home has become the “new normal” for me for now, it is common place for me to use a printing service for my printing needs.

This means that copy shop/A0 is really what I want. To be honest, I don’t think I will ever knowingly purchase a pattern not available in A0 form again.

Luckily, however, my printing service will print out A4 pages, so I could still get the Petula Shirt pattern printed, but here it would have been really nice to have had the pattern only as a separate file, because my service will only print entire documents, rather than allow the selection of pages. This meant that I had to unnecessarily print out the entire instructions (in two languages) just to get the pattern itself printed.

As someone who uses a printing service, my other beef is with the use of colors to distinguish between sizes, rather than dashes/dots etc. Printing in colour at the printing service I use is about 4 times the price of printing in black and white. Financially, it is simply not viable to use the printing service to print in colour, so I really find it helpful when patterns use something other than colour to distinguish between the lines.

Not to mention that the use of colour in this way could be problematic for those suffering from colour blindness.

Oh and did I mention that after the rigamarole of assembling the entire A4 pattern, you still have to add in seam allowances.

Grrrr!

Leaving behind my annoyance at the work involved in printing this pattern, there was one thing about the construction of the pattern itself which really annoyed me.

The cuffs and button plackets are each done as two pieces which you cut twice and then stitched together, back to front, to create each final cuff or placket. I don’t see any reason why a piece like this, which has one side as a rectangle and runs parallel to the selvedge, can’t just be designed to be folded over, saving you unnecessary stitching and under stitching that comes from joining the two pieces together.

Perhaps there are some technical sewists out there who might be able to enlighten me as to the advantages of a rectangular cuff being two pieces sewn together back-to-back rather than a single piece folded over, because I’ve got not clue!

In any event, I modified my cuff and placket pieces so that I could just fold them over and it worked out just fine.

But again, annoying little modifications are not where I really want to start when I already feel that it’s been such a pain to even get the pattern ready to use.

Ok, granted, these are first-world sewing problems, so please read this rant in view of the spirit of exaggerated frustration with which it is intended!

Sewing the Petula Shirt

Once I actually had my Petula shirts cut out, I found it pretty easy to put together. A word of warning, I didn’t really try to follow the instructions at all, so I can’t attest to their usability.

I did find it a straightforward sew, however.

My Petula shirts are both a size 44.

It definitely doesn’t lie about being a voluminous shirt, so you do end up with a lot of fabric floating around you, so make sure your fabric choice is suitable in this regard.

I also found that, on both versions, the way the pattern sits on me and the fact that there are no separate sleeves means that, visually, it looked much much longer at the sides than it did on the centre front and centre back.

I ended up cutting off about an inch and a half in length at the side seams tapering to nothing at the centre front and back to try to get it to look as though it was all even when worn untucked. Which, granted, is an unlikely way for me to wear it but, in any event, there was no need for that degree of excess length at the sides.

Finally, in the realm of purely human error, I was totally rushing trying to finish the navy Petula shirt before going on vacation and the eagle-eyed amongst you may notice that I sewed several pieces wrong side out.

Realizing this error only when I had finished sewing the collar so that it looked pretty on the outside but horrible on the inside – so flipping the shirt around so that “most” of it was then right way out, wasn’t an option.

Yep, these are the kinds of mistakes I make when I try to speed sew late at night.

Anyone else?

Oh well, a visual reminder of my fallibility each time I put on this shirt won’t do me any harm!

All in all, these are great shirts and I really like them. But, knowing how much of a pain the pattern was to work with, would I have sewn them had I known at the start?

Probably not…

If a pattern is worthwhile, I can compromise. But, the combination of no copy shop version, no seam allowances included and only colour to distinguish between sizes on the pattern, was just a combination too far for me. One of these I could have dealt with, maybe even two.

But I expect indie patterns to make things pretty easy for me and this just wasn’t easy enough…

OK, I know I sound like a spoilt little sewist here, but still…

Where do you draw the line? At what point do you think a sewing pattern becomes so non-user friendly that you’ll just say no?

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.