Burda of the month: 2/2016 #118 raglan sleeve top

Today's post is brought to you by heat wave conditions here in Sydney, a winter-ish issue of Burda and scratchy polyester fabric - in other words I have suffered for the sake of this post. However it was worth it to record the fact that I've made my February Burda of the month project in the month of February - that's 2 out of 2 this year so far, yay for me!

I found this to be another great, with several patterns I liked. I ended up choosing to make 2/2016 #118, a raglan sleeve top with a stand up collar although unfortunately I did not have fabric nearly as cool as the perforated metallic high tech fabric used by Burda:

Image via Burda Style

My fabric is pretty cool in terms of colour though - neon yellow and pink, with sprinkles of blue and orange for good measure. It has a tweed like texture, although it's only a print and not a woven. I recall this fabric popping up on a few Australian bloggers in recent years, including this dress by Top Notch from 2014, so when I spied it on the clearance table at Spotlight recently for the princely sum of $4/m I snapped up a few metres for myself.

The colour may be great, however the feel and texture is not so great. It's polyester/spandex, and it feels a bit like plastic bags woven together - a bit coarse and stiff but with four way stretch. However the stiffness was perfect for this style, as fabric with some body is required to make the collar stand up properly and not collapse. The collar is a straight piece cut on the bias and folded in half. I couldn't add any interfacing because some stretch is needed to ease the collar to the neckline, but luckily this fabric was stiff enough to work without interfacing.

It is quite a boxy shape, and I was tempted to shape it more which would have be easy with all those vertical seam lines but I left it as is instead. I generally make forward shoulder adjustments in all my tops and jackets but I wasn't exactly sure how to do that in a raglan sleeve with a collar like this, and you can see in the photo below that the top pushes to the back a bit and the hem at the front rises:

Because the collar is so wide it doesn't feel like it is pushing against my neck and is comfortable enough to wear. Overall I quite like how this top has turned out. The hem finishes at my high hip and the sleeves just above my elbow, which is perfect for a casual look with skinny pants:

 Overall, another great pattern from Burda. It was very quick and easy to make because it's just a simple raglan top, but I think those seam lines and the stand up collar make it a little bit different. Now if only I could find a fabric like the one used by Burda, I would make another version of this top in a jiffy!