As a fairly novice sewist, I approached the Driftwood blouse with fear and trepidation! It is the first garment I have ever sewn for myself and so was nervous about whether it would pass muster. I'm pleased to say that the end result is great ... albeit with a few mistakes.
I make life more complicated for myself by using a fairly tricky viscose and then sewing french seams wherever I could to make the wrong side comfy and look finished. I had real trouble setting the sleeves in but, with some wonderful help from the T&T FB community, I was able to get them bang on - focusing on the stitch line rather than the very edge of the fabric made all the difference. The real difficulty came with the binding around the neck and ties. I don't really know what I kept doing wrong but I ended up having to cut the binding twice and had three attempts to sew on. Somehow, I kept ending up with a neckline that was way too big as my gathers slipped. My solution was to baste the gathers in place and then sew the binding on ... oh and checking way more often whether I was doing ok. I think it might be helpful if there was an explicit measurement (maybe there is but I didn't clock it) of how long the ties should be so that I would know if I'd got the neckline right. The final glitch was on the cuffs - I did the hack to have cuffed sleeves with buttons on elastic loops and somehow I've ended up with one loop on the edge of the cuff and one loop where the cuff meets the sleeve - I'm living with this mistake and it's only noticeable to me I'm sure.
Size-wise, I think it came up a little big for me. I made a Size I and probably next time will do an H. I'm a UK size 16.
Overall, I really like the end result despite my rookie errors. I will make another one ... in fact, I've already bought some fabric. Hopefully, my next attempt will be an improvement. Thanks to Erica for all her help along the way.