Something new, not a UFO for a change!

Well I finally finished the Burda dress that has been absolutely annoying me for the last two weeks. Thanks to my new resolve of no new UFOs, I overcame the crappy instructions (no surprises there), and the most slithery, shiftiest and difficult to pin down fabric ever.

I made dress 119 from Burda 10/09:


It's a pretty simple shape really, but what I couldn't figure out is how there could be five pleats shown on the line drawing, when there are only three drawn on the pattern piece. Thank god for Pattern Review, because others had figured it out for me: the seam line joining the side pieces with the central pleated panel gets folded under and pressed into another pleat.

So with that sorted out I could finally finish sewing it. The fabric I picked is a grey wool flannel from the stash picked up from either an op shop or a garage sale sometime in the past. Yeah I know, it's plain grey and looks just like the magazine photo but what can I say? Anyway the fabric had a lovely drape and a good dress weight, but it would wrinkle like crazy if I just looked at it, so I decided to underline the whole thing in organza. But the fabric would shift and move badly during sewing even though I used a gajillion pins so it became quite difficult to sew.

But I got there in the end, and underlining it certainly was worth it because here is the back view after a whole day of wearing it at work:

Um, the dress is straight, I'm just standing like a drunken sailor! Sure there's some wrinkling going on back there, but not as much as I expected after sitting down for the most of the day at work. I also lined the entire dress in a Bemberg lining because I thought the organza layer might get scratchy. Shame on Burda for designing a dress that isn't a simple summer floaty thing without a lining, but it's not too hard to use the side pattern pieces, adding a bit extra for the front centre panel and cutting it on the fold so as to cut down bulk. I did the lining right to the edge of the dress because with all those pleats at the neckline there was already enough bulk.

Technically this dress turned out really well - I put in a perfect invisible zip, lined up the waist seamlines exactly and by putting in little darts at the shoulders it fits closely around my forward sloping shoulders. But I think this dress is a little.....blah, to be honest. I think it's a combination of the plain light grey and I think it looks a little like a school uniform. I wore it to work today with a black cardigan and the shoes in the above photos, but perhaps I need to do some dress up to see how I can better style it.

But for now I'm just pleased to get it off the sewing machine and into the wardrobe. I think I'm a glutton for punishment though, because I already have another Burda dress traced off and about to cut!