Tribute Month: Loving Lauren from the Lladybird Blog

Hi – I’m Diane from the sewing and lifestyle blog Distaff and a tongue-in-cheek blog about Japanese sewing patterns, Sewing Japanese. I’d like to give a Tribute Month shout-out to Lauren from the blog Lladybird. Gal, you have saved my bacon over and over again!

I picked up apparel sewing during the long, boring winter of 2015 and waded over my head right away with the Thurlow trousers from Sewaholic. The fly-front zipper made me cry. In desperation, I turned to strangers on the internet and found Lauren’s Thurlow sew-along on Lladybird. Her wit charmed me and her sewing advice was right on, very clearly illustrated and described, every step.

The Thurlows didn’t turn out half bad! I wanted to really learn how to sew pants, so in 2016 I took a two-day pants-making course at Workroom Social in Brooklyn, NY. Lauren was teaching the class along with Workroom Social founder and goddess, Jennifer Wiese. I was trying to explain my fitting problems to Lauren, delicately dancing around the issue of too much flesh but not enough fabric for my thighs and rear.

“Oh,” Lauren said, “so is it like your ass is eating your pants?”

I burst out laughing. Exactly! Ass-eating pants, every time. I learned how to adjust the fit for this … ahem… fitting issue, and I’ve since made much better trousers.

In tribute to Lauren, I thought I’d make a version of a staple of her wardrobe, a sleeveless button-up blouse, Butterick 5526. I couldn’t find that pattern, so I adapted this blouse from the August/September issue of La Mia Boutique, an Italian sewing magazine.

I love all the attention to detail Lauren puts into her apparel – piping, fancy buttons, precise topstitching, cute prints and high-quality fabrics. She always sews her blouses with flat-felled seams, so I did, too. And she sometimes sews an extra button into the hem, just because. So did I, natch. Her blouses are a lot better fitted and have more detail than this one, but this is only the second button-up blouse I’ve made, so I still feel pretty good about it.

I’m wearing this blouse with high-waisted trousers from Simplicity 3688, which I made back in March. The fit is pretty darn good. And guess whose advice I followed to make them? Lauren’s! Thanks, gal!