Burda dress 119, changes to pattern and construction

There were a few changes I made to the pattern prior to and during construction. For those of you interested in the details, this is what I did.

As indicated in the first post on this dress last week, I lengthened the upper body by 1.5 inch. This isn’t hard to do: fold the pleat on the right pattern piece, match it with the placement line on the left pattern piece and you have a full front in which it’s easy to draw a line to lengthen (or shorten) it. I did this just below the armhole. After that the seamlines, diagonal fold and placement lineslines are trued again. Of course this change of length is to be done on the back pattern piece too.
This is not an error in the pattern piece. I know my upper body is longer than average and it’s a change I always do in Burda patterns.

The other change was cutting off the extra triangle pieces that are on the right side pattern pieces for the top, skirt and waist part.

Initially I cut them and understood what the intention was, an extra pleat above and below the waist inset. In the magazine picture this part is invisible and the line drawing isn’t clear either. I decided that this would probably not make things nicer on me and cut them off. After construction I found this picture on the German Burda site and have magnified this part. For me it was a good decision to take them off, the remaining pleats give enough accent as it is.

If you do want to remove these pleats you also have to change the small triangle (piece 26) which has no lines. Or perhaps I just missed them.

I used a chalk marker to do this:

I marked all lines with carbon paper on the wrong side of the fabric, but used basting stitches too on a lot of pieces to have the lines on the right side of the fabric too.

The order of construction for the waist inset is done in the following steps, that are self explanatory if you are using the pattern. (It was at the moment of inserting the inset in the main body/skirt part that I decided not to use those extra pleats, so in these pictures these are still there).

I used a fabric with a bit of stretch, cutting a smaller size for the torso than I would have done with a woven fabric. It  was very snug and I gave the side seam a bit more space.

Another thing I did was making a couple of horizontal stitches in the back of the pleat in the body. It tended to gape and with these invisible stitches the pleat is kept in place better.

Hope these details are helping some of you.

It’s not August yet…

and I finished my first dress from the August issue of Burda.

I’m quite happy with how this dress fits and how it looks on me. The most visible change to the pattern is the neckline. The original neckline was very high and it felt like it was choking me. I didn’t want to disturb the pleat and widened it just a bit but went 4-5 cm down in center front.

I did a few pattern and construction alterations and will write a separate post on that later this week.

Starting to sew from August Burda

I didn’t keep to my pledge of sewing something from a (new) Burda magazine each month. There were two skirts I forgot to blog about, but even if I count these, there are no 6 or 7 garments from Burda magazines sewn by me this year . The August issue could change the numbers. It’s a great issue with quite a few patterns I’d like to make. After seeing previews and especially after seeing some pictures shared by a friend with a subscription, I stalked the newsagent for this issue. It started with a little disappointment that the jacket I like so much is in the petite size range. Perhaps I will draft the details in my jacket pattern at some point, but not now. I have a nice event to go to next week and thought it might be nice to sew a new dress for the occasion.

This is the pattern I’m using, number 119:

Not a very straightforward dress to sew. After tracing the pattern pieces the first thing I did was trying to “assemble” the paper pieces, based on the instructions and common sewing sense. That is necessary with Burda, their instructions are not always clear. Something is lost in translation probably (I have the Dutch issue, the original is German).

There were two things I changed to the pattern:

• the length of the bodice (common alteration for me) which was less difficult than it may seem from the line drawing
• the waist piece. That has a seam at the bottom that is showing easily. In the magazine picture the serged seam is peeking out. I moved the seam to the center back of the waist piece. Easy change and I think it looks better the upper ander under side of that piece both have a folded edge.
  

I think I got how this is intended to be sewn and am ready to cut it.

The pattern calls for 1.95 meter of fabric, the length of my fabric is only 1.80 and it works, It’s probably a bit wider than the fabric Burda used.

Hope this dress works well, I’ve been in doubt of posting this already, but it’s a sewing journey and sometimes it works, sometimes not.

StyleArc Evie top

At StyleArc’s site this is simply described as Knit tank top with a shaped hemline. I would add that is has some flare. I made my second version this week. I added a little bit to the flare.

This is the first one I made, shown as work in progress a few weeks ago. It’s still the only picture I have of it, but it’s been worn and washed several times already (it is hemmed and topstitched after this photo was taken).

Being such an easy to wear style on warmer summer days I made another one, in a fabric with a print this time.

In the past I’ve had some problems getting at ease with my coverstitch machine, but we’re working well together now. I’m very happy with the finishing details.

Inside of the neckline. There was a tan coloured thread on my serger, the black is from the coverstitch.

The hem, done as I described in this post. Basting it first makes it take 10 minutes extra, but so worth it. The cutting line is enclosed by the stitches.