Wow, I really am late to this party. I finally make a Kalle shirt by Closet Core Patterns - actually I made 3 versions. I made a dress version, the tunic - which is the one you can see here and a cropped shirt too. I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about initially, however now I’ve made it I completely get it. This is such a versatile pattern and works well in different fabrics - something flowy - yep it will work, something crisp and with structure, yep it works, something lightweight - yep, something heavier, yep.

So the one I’m sharing here is the tunic length with a regular placket and collar. I chose this patterned Art Gallery Raise the Volume cotton poplin print for this as I loved the random print and I thought it would work very well without having to pattern match - I am right! (don’t you love it when that happens). I was surprised by how many pieces there are for this pattern. The buttonhole stand is added on. In fact, you cut away part of the front piece on the right front and then sew this on. This seems a bit wasteful to me. I understand why you would do this, but in my cropped version I omitted it. It’s a bit of a fabric hog, but you could totally cut the inside yoke, undercollar and inner collar stand out of contrasting fabric and it would look fab. The same goes for the bias hem facing.

I cut the whole thing from my main fabric and used a lightweight interfacing that matched the weight of the fabric perfectly. I hadn’t quite twigged that this fabric was more ivory than white when looking at it online. But my white buttons still look great.

This fabric is perfect for this type of loose shirt and certainly for the summer. It’s comfy, lightweight and perfect for dressing up or down. I’ve worn it for work with some tapered trousers and I think it looks fab with my jeans. As it gets colder I can see this becoming a layering piece. It would also look good belted and it’s the sort of thing my daughter would wear over shorts!

I cut a size 6 from the pattern and knew that it would fit, despite my measurements putting me into different sizes, because of the ease. The only alteration I made to the pattern was to lengthen it by two inches. This works really well for the dress and cropped version as I have a long body, but I feel it does make the tunic length a tad too long and I may yet shorten it.

The fabric behaved very well when I was working with it. It pressed well, holding a nice crease, which really helped with the cuffs and bias hem. It looks amazing when first pressed and even after a full day teaching it still looked fresh by the end of the day. All in all sewing up this fabric was a lovely experience and I love the outcome. I think this might become my go-to summer blouse pattern in the future.

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