Cattern Lace

For a long time I’ve wanted to make a blouse with me-made lace insertions and when I saw so many versions in the shops this Spring I felt the signs were there to finally get on with it. I had an idea in mind for what I wanted and sifted through various blouse patterns in my stash and online before settling on a tried and true- the Tilly and the Buttons Mathilde blouse. I’ve made this a few times over the years, including a short sleeved hack in Liberty lawn with a Torchon lace strip which I made probably 12 or 13 years ago.

For this blouse I wanted all-white with the original billowy sleeves of the Mathilde. I did alter it slightly to omit the back button band, instead creating a keyhole opening with a hook and eye closure at the neckline. The fabric was from Guthrie and Ghani – their white textured vintage linen- and I ordered some white linen threads from Roseground for the lace.

For the insertions I went with two Torchon designs from the book 101 Torchon Patterns by Robin S. Lewis. I used Insertion 4 (p41) for the sleeves and Insertion 11 (page 48) for the centre of the blouse.

I toyed with the idea of removing the pintucks and having two strips of lace down the front but the pintucks are such a gorgeous feature of the blouse I kept them in.

I felt that the design of each insertion complemented one another well, even though they weren’t specifically designed to be paired.

I’ve loved every stage of this make- from working the lace, to constructing the blouse, to wearing the finished garment. You can see a video of it all coming together over on my Instagram .

Project details:

Pattern: insertions 4 and 11

Type of lace: Torchon

Designer / source: Book – 101 Torchon Patterns by Robin S. Lewis

Thread used: Fresia linen 80/2 and Bockens linen 35/2

Stitches and techniques: half stitch diamonds; gimp/double gimp; Torchon ground