August Burda of the Month: 8/2016 #113 lace dress

Being very late in making this month's Burda project has ironically worked out for the best - the Burda August is always full of summer clothes but that's in the middle of our winter which makes it hard to get enthused about making anything. But since the weather is warming up around here and I have a few Christmas parties coming up late next month it was very easy to pick out a project from this issue.

Burda describes this as a Couture Dress - pattern number 08/2016 #113 - but I think they're using the phrase 'couture' a bit liberally since there's little couture about the construction methods. Regardless, it's a great looking dress:

Image via Burda Style

This is a tall pattern and comes in size ranges 72 - 88. Burda tall sizes are designed for ladies that are 176cm or taller, which I am definitely not! But I am long waisted, which meantt the waist line of this pattern hit me in the right spot but I did reduce the skirt length by 18cm.

I did forget to alter the depth of the armscye though, and you can see that my dress sits quite low under my arms in comparison to the model's picture above. But it's not scandalously low, and I can still wear a strapless bra with this dress without it showing.

I decided not to make the belt that came with the pattern because it involves several layers of fabrics folded origami style and my fabric is quite spongy and would have been too thick to look any good. The fabric is a lace I bought from The Fabric Store a few years ago, which if I recall correctly is a Marc Jacobs fabric:

It has a small amount of stretch which was lucky for me since my dress turned out a bit on the snug side (might be time to retake my measurements after a slothful winter!). The fabric is a bit transparent though, which you can see when I hold the fabric up to the light - that's the seam line running down the middle:

So I decided to fully line this dress instead of just the bodice as required by the pattern. I used a very stretchy polyester knit for the lining which meant I could just sew the skirt as a tube rather than with the split. The wrap of this dress is very deep so it's unlikely to have a wardrobe malfunction, but with this lining there is no chance of accidentally flashing anything at all:

As usual, a fitted dress with a waist seam and darts suits my figure and I managed to get a very close fitting dress without any pooling at the small of my back (the stretch of the fabric helps with that as well).

I made a slight change to the construction at the back. I chose not to run the invisible zip right to the top of the neckband because I thought that trying to get the zipper head past the bulky neckband would be difficult. Instead I stopped it below the neckband and instead sewed on a button and elastic loop to hold the neckband together. It doesn't work so well, as you can see in the photo below the neckband doesn't sit very nicely together, but it will be covered by my hair so it's good enough for me:

Overall, I love this dress. It's a very simple silhouette, a bit sexy without showing too much skin at all and very easy to sew. If I make this again I would use a solid fabric because I love the look of the darts meeting in an inverted 'v' at the side seam, but that detail is lost in this busy fabric. And I'm also very pleased at finally using this fabric - it's another piece in my stash that I've been wanting to use for a very long time but the right pattern just didn't come along until now.