Burda of the Month: 10/2014 # 111 Cowl Neck Dress

Spring is in the air around these parts and a spring is finally back in my step! The return of my sewing mojo has coincided with me finishing up a few things that have been keeping me  busy lately so I'm hoping I can now get busy on my sewing once again. We've finally finished the work on our house and it's now on the market for the next month before being auctioned in early November. It's going to be a challenge keeping it clean for the next month, but at least the hard work is over and done with.

So if you've been paying attention, you've probably realised that I haven't made a Burda pattern for quite a while and yet here I am skipping ahead to the October issue. Very true, I haven't made my Burda of the month project since the June issue. My love for order and logic means that I really wanted to go back to the June issue and make them in order, but the October issue is such a great issue that I wanted to make this dress right away:

This is pattern #111 from 10/2014 issue, which is a super simple knit dress with an interesting cowl neckline - the drapes are stitched down in three little folds on either side of the neckline.

I used a stretch polyester crepe in a black and cream print that I picked up from Spotlight last week (during one of their sales of course!):

Usually I prefer dresses made out of woven fabric because I like the structure and crispness, but I have to profess my love for this dress. It was really difficult to get a flattering photo of this dress though, and it does look better in real life. I think I need a dressier pair of heels, perhaps something high and strappy to wear with it (but all my non-necessary shoes and accessories are packed away at the moment too!).

Being small busted I quite like having a bit of excess fabric draping across the front, although mine doesn't seem to drape nearly as much as the dress worn by the model in the photo in the magazine.

I made this mostly on my overlocker so it was really quick to make, being just a front, back and sleeves. The neckline is wide enough to not need a zipper, and I cheated by using that iron on Steam-a-Seam tape to do the hems and the back neckline mainly because I couldn't find a twin needle abut also because it looks neater.

The only change I made to the pattern was to sew two vertical darts in the back to reduce the amount of fabric pooling in my swayback. I didn't want to do a centre back seam so I could make a sway back adjustment, but the darts seem to take care of most of the excess fabric so I could get a neat fit.

I contemplated making this dress with short sleeves since we are now coming in to summer, but in the end I stuck with the long sleeve option because the fabric is stretchy enough to scrunch the sleeves up above my elbow for those hotter days.

So overall I can highly recommend this pattern - it's really simple to make and has lovely lines and drape. There's also a pattern in this issue for this style as a top which has a slight variation at the neckline by including tabs to hold the cowl back at the sides which I can also see me making in the near future if I can find the right fabric.

Speaking of fabric, I popped by The Remnant Warehouse to buy some black jersey to make a Halloween costume for Anna and since they are having a 25% off sale I may have accidentally picked up a few extra pieces!

I really don't know how that happened, honestly!