Burda 08/2017;119 Archives - Handmade by Carolyn

O haiiiiii!! As per the title of this post I have indeed made a cool white dress. Noice, huh?

IN other news, in an attempt to be more time efficient I am now aiming to write this blog post in the swiftest time possible, and with minimal to-ing and fro-ing and correcting and proof-reading. Since normally I’m about as slow as a wet week. Let’s see how I go… it is now 16:17…

So this is Burda 08/2017; 119; also known as the “miscellaneous dress” on the Burda style website. I was idly browsing on the website and spotted it, and instantly fell in love. I almost almost clicked buy now for the pdf, when I thought to do a last minute check on the Burda magazines I have in my collection. Bingo. Of course I already have it. WIN!!

I had a length of white cotton sateen sent to me by Minerva; it’s very thin and a little crisp, and perfect for a highly detailed little summer dress like this design, I think, with some twists and folds and pleats and things that are perfectly highlighted in a plain colour. Or,should I say, non colour? with black and white, I never know whether it’s technically correct to call them colours actually, but my personal feeling is that both ARE colours and should be awarded that title. Why should the most commonly used shades in apparel not be considered official colours anyway? Weird. But I digress. I’m never going to write a nice swift blog post at this rate!

So, my dress.

I love designs with a twist and/or something unusual/asymmetric/weird about them, which is the reason I chose this design since; it’s chocka with stuff like that; obviously it has that belt/cummerbund thingy at the waist, and there is also an apparently full length asymmetric fold running all the way from the left shoulder right down to the hemline. it’s not really a full length fold, that’s just an optical illusion since it’s chopped off and restarts in the waistline, but I love how it does look like it runs all the way through.

This Burda pattern is quite a challenge actually, and I scratched my head several times as to what I was supposed to be doing. My advice is to mark the seam NUMBERS carefully and accurately; yes, those corners on a Burda pattern where there is a 1, 2 etc; those are the seam numbers which are often used in the instructions. In my view, having them marked in this pattern is imperative to success. Attaching the front bodice and skirt to the ride side middle piece and the right front middle piece, and the tab piece is pretty darn tricky to get your head around. I’m not even sure if I got it exactly right in the end, but it “looks” pretty good and that’s all that matters really.

And truthfully I love a challenge though, something you can really get your teeth into 🙂

Clara asks; does my bum look big in this?

I also have a little feeling I should have done some sort of small bust adjustment, but am probably just splitting hairs here; I’m actually very happy with the final result and am positive I’m going to wear it a lot. You know one of those dresses that it’s almost impossible to take a bad picture of it? It felt a bit like this when I was reviewing the pictures of this one.

The fabric had just a little bit of stretch, just enough that I risked sewing up most of the centre back seam, and only put in a short, 15cm zip at the top end near the neckline, enough that I could fit my head through it. This worked out great, I can pull the dress over my head and it stretches just enough that I can wriggle into it just fine!

The back is really pretty plain; kinda blah with nothing special going on at all. I think in a perfect world I would have chosen for this design to have something equally visually interesting at the back too, but well, you can’t have everything.

The first day I wore it, I paired it with my handmade slides/sandal things that I made at my first shoe camaraderie workshop… I love how they look together!

So that’s it! It is now 16:45; not too terrible… oh but I haven’ t counted the time it took to take and upload pictures. Damm!

I am actually in this picture here, posing like a boss somewhere back there. There just happens to be a subtle, unobtrusive bit of photobombing going on at the same time…