I’ve had my eye on this
dress since reviews of this issue started appearing in Northern Hemisphere
blogs. Unfortunately Burda arrives in
New Zealand a few months late, and I wasn’t about to buy the pattern on line,
when I knew I’d be buying the magazine when it finally arrived here. So I waited patiently and sure enough, just before
Christmas, Burda arrived.
Of course I
didn’t have time to sew it up until after Christmas, but once everyone had gone
back to work I re-engaged with my ongoing project to create an awesome working
wardrobe. I figured that this would be a
practical, comfortable dress with a little something extra to it.
Nothing went smoothly with
this dress. The fabric I had intended to
use wasn’t as wide as I thought (It was from my $1 stash) so I messed around with
the pattern pieces and came up with an alternative layout using more of the
secondary colour. In doing so I created
a princess seam in the front and back bodice pieces, whereas Burda had drafted
them as single pieces with darts. I also
decided against putting a back zip as the fabric has a lot of stretch and I
figured that I would be able to pull it on and off without one, (I also have
never managed to put a zip into a Lycra based fabric without lumps).
Once I’d put together the
top half of the dress I actually read Burda’s instructions for folding the
skirt portion of the dress. Now, when I
first started buying Burda Magazines I could only get them in German, so I
learnt to sew using the numbers, rather than the instructions. When the magazine started coming out in
English I quickly realised that the instructions were not going to help much,
and so carried on sewing by numbers (I explained how the numbers work in this
post) For this skirt I couldn’t work out how it all folded together. I read and re-read the instructions, and
folded and re-folded the fabric until eventually it looked like the photo. I suspect that I folded it so many different
ways, I was eventually going to stumble upon the right way. I certainly didn’t get there with the help of
the instruction!
Initially I was rather disappointed
in this dress…
I’m not sure what I was
expecting, but the skirt is very tulip in shape. The way the model is standing in the magazine
sort of hides the tulip, and I wouldn’t have been so attracted to this dress if
I had realised what shape the skirt was.
I also checked and
realised that the model was wearing a belt, which definitely improved things.
I’m still not sure about the
dress, but I’ll leave it in the wardrobe for the time being. If I decide it doesn’t work I’ll chop off the
skirt, because I do like the top.
In case anyone out there
feels the urge to have a go at this dress, this is how the folding goes:
 |
| Unfolded |
 |
| First fold |
 |
| which is then folded back |
 |
| repeat the first fold on the other side |
 |
| Pick up the corner to... |
 |
| Fold it back on itself and hey presto! |
I’d love to know if anyone
else has tackled this dress and how it came out.
I've often wondered about trying Burda. Are they suitable for beginners?
ReplyDeleteBurda Magazines categorise their patterns by difficulty - the more dots they give it, the harder it is. I certainly wouldn't suggest trying three or four dot patterns first time, but the one and two dot patterns are pretty straight forward and recently they have been doing detailed, step by step instructions, with photos, for one pattern each month, which makes them pretty fool proof.
ReplyDeleteThus pattern was two and half, and the only tricky bit was folding the skirt.
Hi Michelle, You're a no-reply blogger so I couldn't email you back. Can't wait to see your quilt. And I'm very impressed with the number of projects you have on the go!
ReplyDeleteRona