Burda Back Issue Wish List: August 2007

Well, sadly I'm not one of those girls who can't get away with looking incredible in a man's tuxedo shirt. That really seems to be reserved for those of us over 5'4". But even the cabaret lady on the cover straightening her bow tie doesn't make the August 2007 Burda less appealing. Practically every section in this issue has something I'd make and I'm especially in love with this black jersey dress:


Finally, a dress I can do yoga in while at work. Even better, you can turn it into a casual top.


But I really want this issue because of this gorgeous maternity dress. So lovely. And it looks super comfortable too. My sister is tall enough to pull this dress off no problem, and it is neither too fancy nor too casual for her to wear to work. Perfect.


Someone please list this issue on eBay stat!! I've only got three more months before M's adorable belly disappears (er, evacuates?) and I don't know any other pregnant ladies!

Burda Romance

Let me just say that I love my Burda subscription. It's like Christmas once a month. The magazine even comes wrapped, like a wonderful papery present!

I'm not crazy about the patterns this month, though. I'm not really into folksy, although I honestly think it is awesome that they provide patterns for folk-style garments (way to keep the leiderhosen alive, Burda!) . I'm also not too crazy about bright red, so that cuts out all the glamorous red dresses in the first section. Those gowns are either ginormous (not so good when you are 5'4") or skin tight (hello underwear lines!). And, I'll be honest, I just don't go to that many glam events. In my next life, when I become an industry executive (and yet still sew my own clothes) things will be different, obviously. But in this life, grad school has yet to materialize black tie events.

Anyway. I do like this jacket.

I've wanted a velvet jacket for a while and this one has nice clean lines and no puffy shoulder seams (ugh, I look so dumb in them). I don't know if I'd do the decorative hand-stitched embroidery . . . maybe, but my guess is that my stitches wouldn't be terribly even and so it would be less stunningly decorative and more horribly distracting. I've never sewn velvet before, but it can't be that bad. Ha.

I'm not crazy about the camel of the jacket in the photo, mostly because it is so boring. I'd rather do this jacket in a mauve, I think.

I also really like this polo shirt, with the combination of the jersey with the poplin placket and sleeve cuffs. I don't have any patterns that combine jersey with a woven fabric, so I really want to try this and see how it looks. I bet the shirt would be really pretty if I replaced the poplin with satin, for a more dressed up look. And got rid of the pocket.

I think that's it. The chemises are cute too. Really cute, actually. I think I'll wait until next spring to make them, though, since in November it is less lacy chemise weather and more flannel pajama weather.

In terms of patterns, then, slim pickings for me this month. Burda made up for it, though, with the delightfully awkward clothing descriptions to accompany the "love story" section.

The caption for this photo reads: "Sometimes you can hardly wait to be alone together! Until you get there, this calf-length coat in wool velour with trenchcoat leanings will keep you nice and warm."

More apt, I think, would have been: "Sometimes you can hardly wait to be alone together! Until then, keep him guessing by dressing like an eggplant that robbed a leather goods store!"

This poor man. He finally got rid of that coat, only to discover yet another eggplant outfit underneath. Will it never end?? Evidently not, because the caption for this photo claims that "When you've just fallen in love you can't bear to be apart, even for five minutes. This also applies to our silky blouse with neck pleats secured by the collar seam--you really won't want to take it off!"

It's pretty clear that the Mr. Right couldn't hack the purple, since by the third photo the romance has ended: "On Your Own Again. Even though breaking up is hard to do, it's sometimes the only way to start something new. For example, the deliberate style clash between blouse with boyfriend's waistcoat and your goatskin-suede riding breeches." Frankly, I don't blame this girl for running off with the man's waistcoat as an outerwear replacement for that purple coat. It's definitely a step up. I'm not really sure that wearing her boyfriend's waistcoat is the best way to start something new, though.

Project Runway Maternity Dress

I totally fell in love with Shirin's maternity dress for Project Runway this season. I liked it so much that I decided to make one for my sister---well, a simplified version, anyway.


That one's Shirin's. Lovely! It is in silk jersey, has a low cut back (down to the waist), and a straight, but draped neck. I made a few changes to the design:

• Since my sister hardly ever goes to parties, I raised the back to the neckline so that the dress would be more work (and bra!) friendly. As much as I love the low cut back--and it looks really stunning, I think, in the original version--it would make wearing a bra almost impossible. I don't know too many pregnant women who would want to go braless, no matter what they do when they aren't pregnant. Of course, at the moment I only know one pregnant woman, so maybe I'm way off base about the whole bra thing.
  
• Since the back of the dress is pretty plain without the low cut and gathering, I extended the smocking all the way around the waist. This gives the back some detailing and helps curve the shape of the dress around the hips.
• I also decided to lower the neckline a bit because although Shirin's version has quite a bit of drape, that particular neckline wouldn't have looked as good on my sister as it does on the model. Instead, I used a basic cowl neck.
• The armscyes (uh, is that how you do a plural for armscye?) are cut pretty far in on Shirin's version. I don't know if that was on purpose or simply that the dress didn't quite fit the model. It looks a little odd to me, so I cut them a bit closer to the arm on my version. Seems to work better with the cowl neck, anyway.
• I used rayon jersey instead of silk jersey. She's only got three months to go before the baby arrives and silk jersey is way more expensive than rayon ;)
  

The dress itself was pretty easy, actually. I used New Look 6470 (view b) for the cowl neck.


Essentially, I just winged it by extending the shirt into a dress. The only tricky bit has to do with the smocking, which I learned how to do using this tutorial. This dress has only one line of smocking, so I simply placed a grid of three lines of dots across the front and back pieces, just underneath the bust area; the first line of dots was about three inches down from the top of the side seam. The dots were spaced two inches apart and each new row of dots was spaced two inches below the previous row.

This the grid marked on the inside of the front piece of the muslin. I marked them in thread, since my invisible marker didn't show up too well on the black knit. I placed the grid about an inch or two below the empire waist on the dress.

To make sure that I had enough lateral room to complete the line of smocking, I added a "flap" of fabric to each side seam of both the front and back pieces when I cut them. This was pretty important, because otherwise the dress would have been much too narrow along the smocking line. Below you can see the "flap" of fabric (helpfully pointed out with the pen) on the muslin. I actually made the flap both larger and more rectangular on the finished version. I cut along the pattern line until I reached the point where I wanted the first row of dots. Then I cut away from the pattern line for three inches, down four inches, and then back in to the pattern line. That gave me plenty of additional fabric to work with. The rayon I used had a lot of stretch, so if I make this again in a less flexible fabric I would probably cut the flap longer and maybe even a bit wider.

The flap on the right side of the dress. I didn't make the flap large enough on this muslin (it looks kind of like a lump off to one side, here), so I enlarged it when I cut the final pieces.

While I really like New Look patterns, I wasn't crazy about the design of the cowl look for this pattern. There simply isn't much additional fabric at the neckline--basically you just fold over a little bit along the seam and hope the cowl falls so that the inside of the fabric isn't too visible. Seems kind of dumb for a cowl neck with a lot of drape. So, I ignored the instructions and instead cut the inside drape of the cowl much longer.

Not much of an overlay, right?

I don't have a pic of the inside of the cowl neck for the finished dress, but basically I extended the inner drape of the cowl neck all the way to below the bust (I marked the point with the pen in the photo below). This is nice because you can either a.) incorporate the drape into the smocking when you sew it, so that the inner and outer cowl neck will stretch together across the bust or b.) smock only the outside layer and then cover the smocking on the inside (to protect it) with the inner drape of the cowl neck. I ended up incorporating the inner fabric into the smocking.

For the final pieces, I cut the inner drape of the cowl neck all the way down to below the bust, following the pattern lines for the shoulders and armscyes. Since I incorporated the inner drape into the smocking, I also made sure to cut the "flaps" on the inner drape, as well as the outer drape.

I extended the back piece the same way--elongating it and adding in the flaps of fabric on the side for the smocking. After that the dress is super simple. I smocked the front and back pieces separately, based the seams together at the smocking and then more or less serged it all together. I fininshed the armscye seams with my serger and topstitched the back of the armscyes with my sewing machine and handsewed the front. This means there is no topstitching on the front of the dress. I finished the hem of the dress with my serger, doing a lettuce edge so that the hem would be nice and ripply.

On the whole it turned out pretty well. On the dress dummy, I'm afraid it looks a little lumpy and the smocking collapses a bit. That's because my pregnancy bump for the dummy isn't as smooth and gradual as my sister's belly is. I was worried that the cowl neck would hide the smocking, but the smocking is actually really visible and much tighter on my sister than on the dummy. So I guess it worked out well!

Close-up of the back smocking.

The finished dress.