3 dot Burda conquered in less than a week!

The husband and I had a night out with some friends on Saturday night, sans children. Dinner, drinks and adult conversation - boy was I excited about this night out because for us they are few and far between. In fact this is only the second time we've been out together without Anna since she was born 20 months ago! So I decided that I needed something new to wear: enter Burda 2008-09, jacket 129

It's a fairly simple shawl collared jacket, made up in the magazine in a bland beige colour which is why I overlooked it for all this time. But this photo I spied recently in the fashion section of the weekend newspaper was my inspiration:

This is actually a $968 white blazer with a $495 black lace short sleeved blouse layered over it, with the sleeves of the blazer casually but stylishly scrunched up. Now, I can't do those weird layering combinations without looking, well, weird, and my sleeves would never stay so perfectly pushed up. And so this is my version:

I used a coffee coloured cotton sateen from the stash for the base layer, and a black cotton lace for the upper layer that was sort of from the stash. What I mean by 'sort of' is that I had some black polyester type lace in a traditional flower pattern in the stash that I was (finally) going to use, having been gifted it and not likely to use since it's not my style. But when I was in Spotlight buying some thread and lining, I spied this cotton lace with a circle pattern that I liked better, and it was on sale and there you go: my intention was to use stash material but the reality didn't quite make it!

To make it I just treated the cotton sateen as underlining to the lace, stitching the two layers together for each pattern piece and then making the jacket up as per usual. I left the lace layer off the collar piece and made the pocket welts from the cotton sateen as well to make them stand out. I made a bound buttonhole too, but it's in black so you can barely see it at all - hardly worth the trouble but it does look better than a machine buttonhole I have to admit.

I started this last Monday night and finished it Saturday lunchtime, working on it for about 9 hours all up including tracing the pattern, cutting out and sewing up. Gotta love those shawl collar jackets - they are much simpler and quicker to make than a notched collar jacket. Plus this has raglan sleeves so there is no setting in of those pesky sleeve caps. It also helped that I didn't really look at the Burda instructions at all except for how to figure out how the fiddly neck facing is attached to the collar facing, and so I didn't waste precious time trying to decipher what passes for their sewing instructions.

I also followed this tutorial over at Threads on how to do a bagged lining. I find this one much simpler to understand than any of the sewing books I have, although they lost me completely on how to do the sleeve hems so I did that by hand.

And this is how I wore it out on Saturday night, paired with shiny heels and a black Vogue 8280 (the Roland Mouret galaxy dress knock off) that I made some time ago:

I was a bit overdressed compared to my dining companions, but I don' t often have the chance to get all dressed up so when I do I grab it with both hands!