Those who know me rarely see me in anything but black, grey or blue clothes. I know those colours work on me, but it can get a bit boring. Time for some change! Read on for more on my shirt mash-up.

I really love the “on trend” mustard/ocker colour on other people. So, after my sister-in-law convinced me I could pull it of too, I bought this almost golden peachskin with blue and white spots.

I immediately knew I wanted a shirt out of it, but I’m a bit stuck in the Sew Over It universe… An Alex shirt from the first SOI e-book immediately sprang to mind, but I already have two of those. Ever since the Work to Weekend e-book came out, I’m also eager to make the Kate shirt (or the dress version), but didn’t think the style of the print and the pattern match. Not knowing what to do, I turned to the lovely community and posted this question in the Kittenish Behaviour group on Facebook. I got some great reactions that helped me a lot!

In the end I decided on a mash-up of Kate and Alex. Again the Alex body because I know it would work on me and I didn’t want to ruin the fabric. But to mix it up, I used the Kate sleeves, seeing as that is what I like the most about that pattern.

I’m quite pleased with the end result. I’m still not sure I could pull the colour off, but I like the mash-up! It’s my favourite Alex blouse so far. The sleeves do change it enough to not feel like a duplicate from what I already have (the colour helps too of course). Combined with my high waisted palazzo pants it feels quite vintage-y too! I took my time making it, which resulted in pretty closely matched pockets. If you stand far away enough, you can’t really see them.

I choose to cover the buttons in the fabric, since the fabric is busy enough. Bigger or busier buttons could have put me of wearing it. The fabric itself is quite nice, it pressed really well and is really soft. The downside is the fact that it’s synthetic, so I probably won’t wear it high summer. But because it’s loose fitting, I think it will get some wear before it gets too hot. Looking at the weather the past week, summer is still far away 😅

Now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve combined two patterns together before 😱 Definitely doing that again though! Do you often combine patterns? What’s your favourite mash-up?