Parisian Chic

It's finally autumn around these parts, and we've been enjoying cool but sunny days. Time to put away summer skirts and shorts but I'm in desperate need of some winter smart casual clothes so that on my days off work I can maintain my yummy mummy look (ha! as if). Despite knowing that, I've made a lovely dress that is too smart for the playground but perfect for work or high tea sans grubby toddlers of course. What can I say, I'm more motivated by want than need I guess!

I made another Burda dress, happily much easier than the last one. I made dress 128 from the 8/09 issue which looks like thus:

And here's my version:

Just in case you're bored with the background of my loungeroom where I take all of my photos because it has the best light and space to get a good shot, I popped over to Paris especially for a photoshoot. Luckily we had a long weekend here this weekend.....

Only kidding, just a bit of photoshop mischief!

This was such an easy dress to make, very quick to sew up and the only trouble I had with it was due to not checking the length of the dress before cutting it out. Because the model is sitting down, you can't accurately tell from the photo the finished length of the dress. Normally I just leave off the hem allowance to Burda dresses when I trace them and the length is (sometimes) ok, but this time it was about 10cm too long for me. But because the dress narrows dramatically from the hips to the bottom edge it's not a simple job of just turning up the hem to the height you want because the bottom edge isn't as wide as the point where it turns up. Technically, pegged hems need to be cut out like this:

But I didn't want to take anymore width off the sides of the skirt to recreate this at the length I needed just in case it turned out too tight to walk properly, so I took the easy / cheater's way out of just doing a super narrow hem by sewing on some bias tape and turning that under. Problem solved, the hem turned up and sewed down flat nicely due to the stretch in the bias tape.

I haven't made a matching grosgrain ribbon belt, but I think I will because it is a pretty look. The fabric I used is from the stash (yay!), again an opshop buy I think because something else had been cut out from it. I think it is wool or has a high wool content because it gets that wet dog smell when wet and presses really well, but it's very soft like a flannel or brushed wool. It's a dark grey / black herringbone pattern and is just right for this dress. Although it has no stretch, so I'm going to have to take dainty steps instead of striding out purposely in the normal manner I get about in, due to the narrow width at the bottom of the skirt.

I also made a full lining by cutting out the pattern pieces in a grey bemsilk and making the pleats at the waist because I was too lazy to figure out and redraw the pattern piece without the pleats. But it doesn't add too much volume there at the waist so once again the easy way out wins the day.

Thanks for your lovely comments for Anna's shirt. Thankfully the ear infection cleared up very quickly due to the antibiotics she had to take, but I'll make sure I try your olive oil tip JBranley next time first in preference to dosing her up with antibiotics. Pixie your comment had me laughing out loud!

And Verobirdie, yes a 6 hour meeting is crazy and probably not useful at all but since we had staff fly in from our regional offices we crammed as much into the day as we could. I'm sure they were as glad as I was to get out there!

Well it's a very short working week for me this week with today (Monday) being a public holiday and Wednesday I'll be out in one of our regional offices about three hours away to deliver some training. Happily I should get some op shopping in too!