Puff-sleeved top/ Agnes from Tilly and the button

I have been wanting a puffed sleeved top for a while now, and have been looking online for patterns.

The only one I found that hit the spot was Agnes from Tilly and the buttons; however I was hesitant to buy this, as I dont’t have the best experience with TATB patterns. I love many of her designs, and want to love her patterns as well. I have tried 3 or 4 of her patterns the past few years, but unfortunately they all disappointed me. The drafting is very poor. One dress had the same pattern piece for front and back! That might work if you are wear a a-cup, but anything above that and it will look horrendous. Missing marks, pattern pieces that don’t match up and clothing that was ill-fitting was the result. I had to rework the patterns a lot, and gave up on her patterns in the end.

But, again, I was sucked in by the pretty design, and bought the Agnes. Sure enough, the drafting was off. For example: For the puff sleeves you add a piece of elastic – there is no grading for the placement of this between the sizes! This means that for the smallest size, the puff starts at the shoulder, but for the largest size on the mid arm! As TATB caters to beginners this is really not OK. Grading between sizes should be done in the pattern, really.

I compared the pattern pieces with my tnt long-sleeve jersey pattern (Jalie 2805, modified through the years to fit me perfectly), and could see they were very, very different; if I used the Agnes pattern I would end up with a shirt that was very tight across the chest and stomach, which looks cute on the slim, young and small-busted model on the pattern, but surely not on my 45 year old body. Also, it had very angled and strangly long/ tall shoulders as well. So in the end I just used my own pattern, adding only the top part of the sleeves from the Agnes pattern (moving the elastic markings accordingly to have the puff at the shoulder and not mid-arm).

I used DBP for this – I loooooove DBP, so soft and nice!

This worked out very well. I am so happy with this top, the puff sleeves make me feel like a princes! I might buy a TATB pattern again sometime, just knowing that I must pluck the design elements I want, and work them into another pattern for it to work.