Burda of (last) month: 4/2014 #117 - the criss cross dress

I finished my April Burda of the month project a few days ago but haven't had a chance to photograph it yet. Honestly it turned out rather bad so I was tempted just to bin it but I wanted to reassure you all that I'm only human and make my fair share of wadders too! I did intend this to be a hopefully wearable muslin and I do have extra fabric to fix up the issues and remake it, but sadly I'm lacking enthusiasm for spending anymore time on it right now.

In the April issue of Burda I was immediately drawn to dress #117 which has a flattering cross over front and three quarter raglan sleeves. Doesn't the model look angelic in her white dress with her handsome boyfriend in a white kitchen?:

Too good to be true in the way only Burda can achieve! I made my version in a teal green ponte knit that I ordered on line from Girl Charlee fabrics. When it arrived the colour was more subdued than I had hoped from a fabric described as teal green, but the fabric felt weighty with a good amount of recovery so I thought it would be well used as a first version of this dress that I was hoping would be a wearable muslin but no harm done if it didn't turn out well.  And turn out badly it did!

Shall we start with the good before moving on to the really bad? I love those diagonal darts in the back - they are unusual but still achieved a close fit for me so I may frankenpattern this back onto other patterns so I can used this feature again. The back pattern pieces are drafted well and those darts align perfectly:

The front however is just terribly, terribly sad. I made the smallest size at the bust line, size 17, but there is way too much fabric causing ripples and folds in all sorts of unflattering spots. I need to pinch out a fair amount of fabric in the triangle area underneath the bust darts which extend from the centre front to the side:

Even lifting my arms up didn't help with those folds and bulges of fabric along the dart lines:

So I need to completely re-do that bodice to pinch out the extra fabric because this version is totally unwearable. The neckline doesn't gape too badly though, and although it's low it doesn't reveal my bra so really it's not that low for Burda standards.

I found the instructions to be completely baffling, and I really tried hard to follow them this time. I think their method meant the top cross over piece was left unstitched where it crossed over the under cross over piece, with the seam allowances folded under, which now that I look closely at the line drawings might actually be what they meant.  Their method didn't make any sense to me at all and in the end I followed the photo instructions that Sigrid helpfully has in her pattern review - this way was much better but it still involved a small bit near the triangle top of the skirt at the centre front unsewn. I just used a bit of steam a seam to glue the bits together! Inside of the dress is a complete mess because of the overlapping facings and darts of the complicated front.

So will I make this again? Probably not - I like the idea of the pattern but the arrangement of the front pieces is just messy, even if I did manage to get rid of the excess fabric. Onwards and upwards to the next pattern! And the added bonus is that this fabric didn't even make it to the fabric stash from the letter box. I might just cut it in half and make a straight skirt from it, if I can think of a suitable top to wear with it - it's a very difficult colour to find a complementary colour top.

Finally thanks for all your wishes regarding my father in law and Anna. Anna's arm is healing very well and she has a brand new purple cast which she not only loves but weighs less and is slim enough to wear under her normal clothes which makes it a bit easier.

The latest accessory in white (and clothes in black)

We've had a whirlwind two weeks around here, hence the blog silence. All the usual things - busyness at work in a new job, school holidays, Easter and then Anna does this to herself:

She slipped from the monkey bars whilst at vacation care and landed awkwardly, completely snapping the humerus bone above her elbow. You know things are going to be bad when you get a phone call at work that begins with "don't panic, Anna's fine but she's gone to hospital in an ambulance...."! She ended up needing surgery to insert wires into her arm to align the bones so that they regrow together correctly.

But kids are pretty resilient, and she's managed it pretty well so far. At the moment it's only a half cast with a bandage around it to allow for swelling to subside and the wound to heal, so it's pretty bulky and difficult to get clothes on with it. Luckily it's her left arm so she can still write and draw with her other hand, but she's quickly finding out how difficult it is to do things one handed!

And sadly a few days before this occurred, my father in law passed away after his condition rapidly deteriorated. It wasn't totally unexpected given how frail and ill he has been these last few months, but when we visited him just a few weeks ago he was doing remarkably well and preparations were being made for him to go home so it still came as a surprise. We've spent the last week with my mother in law doing funeral preparations and going through the Chinese cultural customs associated with death. I'm not particularly religious but I found the Buddhist customs quite comforting - there were monks chanting and praying at the funeral service, and before hand we burned incense money and clothes for his spirit to take with him to his next life.

I also had to quickly make some funeral appropriate clothes for Anna and Toby since their wardrobes are pretty much all brightly coloured and casual. For Anna I refashioned a dress that a friend had given to me that was made from some quality stretch textured fabric but in a horrible design - a wide, mid calf length skirt with an asymmetrical hem, ruched bodice and a bandeau style top. So all I did was shorten the skirt keeping the asymmetrical hemline, made a tube for the bodice and sewed on some gathered straps. I also added a ruffled band to the front neckline, and a gathered elastic belt. Mostly all sewn on the overlocker meant it took less than two hours to finish, and Anna loves it although worryingly she refers to it as her funeral dress.

 

 

For Toby I quickly made a pair of pull on pants in black cotton drill from McCalls 6061. There's nothing special to say about these, but a note for my future self (and anyone else thinking about making these) is that this pattern is really wide but really short! It's sized for up to 18 month olds, but the pants are really baggy so they still fit Toby even though he's now two and not a small child either. They are also really high waisted, so I lowered the rise by 4cm, and lengthen the leg by 5cm although looking at these photos I could have made them longer. I added the band around the knees for decoration, copying a pair of RTW pants that are too small for him now. The pockets are just patch pockets and there is a faux fly although you can't really see it in black.



Nearly all of Toby's pants are now too short - he's somehow shot up in the last few months without me noticing at all! Now that the weather is finally starting to get cooler in Sydney  I'll have to pause in all my selfish sewing to make him some more clothes - hopefully the dramas are over around here for now and we can get back to our usual busy but ordinary lives.

Burda 9505: birthday shirt

So as I said last post, it was Toby's second birthday last Saturday. It sort of snuck up on me with all that's been going on lately, but I did manage to make his birthday shirt last Friday night. Luckily I've made this pattern before so it took less than 3 hours which isn't too bad for the fiddliness that little people clothing involves!

I used view B of Burda 9505, which was gifted to me by Steph and I used View A for Toby's first birthday shirt too (here). This will probably be the last time I use it too since it only goes up to 18 months in size and this shirt is rather a slim fit on him. It's actually quite a good pattern, drafting wise, because I have found that kids patterns are usually way too big but this one is spot on. Unfortunately it's now out of print, but if you have this in your stash I can highly recommend you use it if you have a little one in your life.

I chose to use an elephant print cotton poplin that I bought from Spotlight a while ago mainly because I figure he has the rest of his life to wear stripes or plaid or solid colours and when you're two you should wear a really fun print! Plus I wanted to use up the rest of this fabric in case there wasn't another occasion for it in the future and it stayed in the stash forever.

The pattern is pretty straightforward - it's just a normal shirt sewn on a smaller scale. I noticed that the instructions for view B aren't as detailed as the instructions for view A - there aren't any instructions to finish the sleeve or the tab other than doing a narrow hem to the edge. It wasn't difficult to figure out, but it just seemed odd to leave it out given that the other steps are spelled out. I also French seamed the sleeve edge because the seam edge would be visible when the sleeve is rolled up, which the pattern also didn't suggest but looks much better than having a serged edge showing.

I used snaps instead of buttons because they not only took less time than buttons but they also make it easier to get Toby into and out of this shirt because he can be very squirmy sometimes. I left off the back yoke and instead cut the back as one single piece so that I didn't have to match those elephants at the back - pure laziness but it's not really a noticeable feature in this fabric anyway:

And how good is my pattern matching at the front edge! The birthday boy seems pretty happy with his shirt and his birthday presents - he's a bit obsessed with Peppa Pig, dinosaurs and soccer balls at the moment so he was quite easy to satisfy. If only they stayed so innocent and little for longer!

And this is last year's shirt when he turned one - I can't believe how much he's changed!

February Burda of the month: 3/2014 #117 pleated skirt

At the very beginning of February I traced off three patterns thinking that I'd get not one but three February Burda projects done. Ha ha wishful thinking! Real life got in the way last month and here we are few days into April and I've only just finished one and it was such a simple skirt that I managed to cut it out and sew it last night and took photos of it today. In the end I made a skirt (3/2014 #117) from the "Pretty Grunge" collection of the March issue - having lived through grunge the first time around I was a bit hesitant but without Burda's crazy styling (socks and high heels, really?) it doesn't look too bad:

 

I did trace off a double breasted blazer with ginormous lapels in this issue too (3/2014 #101) which I thought looked interesting in a nice way and even made two muslins because it was a size 36 and I knew I needed to grade down a size. But when it came time to making it I discovered the fabric I wanted to use was too small a piece - it was left over from another project and I wanted this jacket to make a matching suit. So I've set it aside until I can decide on another piece of fabric (no shortage of that around here, I just need to wait until inspiration strikes). The other pattern I also traced is just a pair of tracksuit pants (3/2014 #112) which I haven't made yet because it's just so hot here still, and they possibly won't warrant a blog post anyway.

I used a piece of fabric from deep within the stash - literally it was at the very back of the shelf and I had to dig through to piles of other fabrics to get it out. I can't remember it's origin, probably an opshop I'd say. It's a crisp cotton in dark tan with a weird print. I was careful not to place one of those dark pink bits of the print at ahem, crotch level on the front:

but didn't give the same careful print placement consideration for the back view, so now it looks like I have a target on my butt:

And for the side seams I didn't even attempt pattern matching, or the waistband either out of pure laziness:

Ah well, I'm convinced that absolutely no one except for us sewists pay any attention to matching patterns at seams or print placement. Have a look at this lovely lady wearing a jumpsuit with questionable pattern placement that I pinned from whowhatwear.com just because it made me laugh out loud:


image source here

Obviously this pattern placement was very deliberate but I'm not convinced it's a look. So we should all be a bit easier on ourselves I think!

Overall I found this pattern to be pretty good. It has inseam pockets on both sides seams which are useful, the back is fitted with two darts so it's a sleek fit at the back but the slightly angled pleats on the front don't add an unsightly amount of volume either. I don't think the skirt is as narrow as the one worn by model in the photo suggests but any narrower and you wouldn't be able to walk because the skirt doesn't have a walking vent.  I also lopped about 5cm off the hem but looking at these photos it could probably be a bit shorter. You do need to remember to flare the hem allowance out because the skirt is quite pegged, which I forgot to do and so have made a super narrow hem instead - I've made many skirts like this in the past so I really should have known better.

And speaking of my past creations, can you believe it that Toby is 2 years old tomorrow? The time has just flown by. Tonight I need to put in some hours to make him a birthday shirt, I don't want him to feel neglected as the second child!

I caved in and went to the Fabric Cave sale today - so did a lot of people too judging by how busy the store was! The funniest thing was seeing the fabrics I donated a few weeks ago on the shelves, but I made sure I didn't buy any of them back. Unfortunately Toby fell asleep in my arms just as I arrived in the store so I was rather restricted in what I could get having to lug his 13kg around in one arm and dig through their packed shelves with the other. In the end I picked up these pieces for the bargain price of $15.80:

I do actually have plans for these pieces so I feel no shame in picking up yet more fabrics, especially as the proceeds are going to such a good cause and it's much less than my recent donation to them.

The last summer dress: Vogue 2738 in graphic navy and white

Happy news - my fabric.com order arrived the day after the last post which was a speedy 7 days delivery, very impressive! The fabric colours are exactly what I wanted, and the fabric quality is not too bad either.

And even happier news is that my father in law has improved - he's gone from being unconscious on life support with only a few days to live after having a heart attack and a mini stroke on top of the pneumonia he was already in hospital for to now being awake, lucid and surprising everyone with his recovery. He can't walk at the moment, and eating and drinking is very difficult because he can't swallow properly, so we're in a bit of limbo now waiting to see if he improves enough to go home or into a lower level of care or whether he'll take a turn for the worse. Either way we all got to see him at the weekend and spend some quality time with him, and I think the children cheered up a little - hospitals are so incredibly boring when you've been there a while!

And I even managed to get some sewing done. Since we are slowly but surely slipping into the cooler weather (finally) I thought I'd squeeze in one last summer dress using the rest of the cotton fabric I bought from Tessuti and used for the Burda pants two posts ago.

I actually started this dress several weeks ago, at the same I cut out the Burda pants but it took a while to finish off the hem. Happily though it's completed, and here you are:

 

 

I decided to use Vogue 2783 again, a pattern which sat in my stash for many years uncut and unloved until last November when I made it in a cotton floral sateen to wear to a Pattern Review high tea organised by the lovely Maria and discovered that it's actually quite a nice pattern after a bit of fitting work of course. And since I had made quite a lot of fitting changes - taking it in substantially and shortening he dress it made sense to make it again.

I had planned to make this version slightly different to the previous one by adding cap sleeves, a piped waistband and changing the flared skirt to a pencil skirt so that this version would be more corporate than casual - there's just something about a sleeveless dress with a flared skirt that says 'sun dress' more than 'work dress' to me. But as you can see I only got as far as adding cap sleeves to it before my enthusiasm for drafting pattern changes wore out!

I figured that a belt around the waist would do instead of a piped waistband and also be more versatile in terms of being able to wear different colours. I've worn it here with red accessories but I actually think the yellow shoes from the previous post look better against this fabric.

Although the fabric is fairly densely woven I fully lined this version with a white cotton batiste to prevent any risk of sheerness, which also neatly finished the neckline and underarm area without having to fiddle about with bias binding.

I used some nylon piping along the front and back vertical seams but the fabric is so busy you can barely see it - the piping is more noticeable in real life though. I think the previous version I made with navy blue piping against the floral fabric was more striking but I still think it's an interesting touch:

I can see this working in the office worn with a white blazer (which I happen to have one about 75% made!) to make it look a bit more serious but it would also be a nice dress worn casually, so in the end my laziness paid off and making it like this is probably more versatile.

And now to get on to making some clothes from my recent delivery - I'm really looking forward to making some cozy autumn and winter clothes.

When not sewing....buy more fabric!

I have hardly sewn a stitch in the last two weeks, which is highly unusual for me. Sadly my father in law is critically ill and my husband has been interstate visiting him, so it's just been me and the kids. Let me tell you it's exhausting looking after kids by yourself - single parents you definitely have my respect. And since my sewing room is above our garage which is separate to our house I can't go in there when the kids are finally in bed asleep. But I haven't been completely slack - I have cut out and pinned four projects and have unpicked several previous makes for a reworking (ie fixing up previous shockers!) so hopefully I can start being more productive soon.

But like any frustrated sewist who isn't sewing I've instead been buying more fabrics and adding to my already extremely long to do list. In order to shame myself in to using them soon and not just adding them to the stash I thought I'd confess here on my blog.

First up I bought several pieces from fabric.com because I discovered the postage cost for four pieces wasn't much more than it was for one (around $25). I haven't purchased from them before so fingers crossed the quality is decent and it doesn't take too long to deliver.

I have been searching in all the fabric stores here in Sydney for a dark denim chambray to make a shirt, but have only been able to find really light blues. So I purchased this Robert Kaufman dark indigo chambray:
 

 

image via Pinterest

image via Pinterest

After seeing so many great pieces during Jungle January I decided to buy my first ever piece of animal print fabric, this leopard print cotton that I intend to make a pencil skirt:



image via Pinterest

I also bought some navy blue and white jumbo polka dot cotton fabric (well I hope it's more navy blue than the colour of the photo below) also to make a pencil skirt:



image via Pinterest

The final piece is this mint green and white mini polka dot cotton possibly to make something for the kids but more than likely a shirt for myself!



Image via Sportscraft

Then of course there's been a little bit of real life shopping. I broke my cardinal rule of never buying anything from Spotlight full price because I saw some gorgeous tan and black chevron stripe cotton Japanese duck fabric that only had a little bit left on the bolt. I didn't want to risk it selling out so I bought it then and there - and of course less than a week later they had a 30% off sale! It wasn't too expensive though, and I do love the fabric so no harm done I guess. I've already cut this out so hopefully I'll have something awesome made soon from it:

And the final act of fabric gluttony occurred a few weeks at a pre sewing bloggers lunch meet up at the Remnant Warehouse. I swear I wasn't going to buy anything (unless I found the mythical dark chambray) but after I spotted some bizarre but cute ponte knit with puffy giant polka dots and some dark charcoal 100% wool suiting both for only $9.95/m I decided to pick up a few metres of each.

I was going to end by saying I think that's enough fabric purchasing for now (ha! as if), but I've just received an email from one of the ASG ladies revealing that the Fabric Cave is having a sale on the 4th - 11th April. Their prices are insanely good value to begin with, so I cannot imagine the bargains that will be had at one of their sales. And since I dropped off a huge bag there recently I'm sure I can rehome some other pieces instead!

And a big hello to Gabrielle from Up Sew Late - we met up today in the city to take some photos of her lovely new silk top and had a great chat/rant about sewing, blogging and children who are too unfocused to learn how to sew from their mums. I love meeting up with bloggers and fellow sewists in real life, I feel like we're all part of a secret society!