Due to my general impatience, I put that one in the 'think-about-it-later' pile and instead decided on pattern 114 from the 5/2010 issue, a tiered mini dress.
As you can see, it's a great summer dress and Burda had it made up in a really nice Liberty print.
Seeing as quite a few people have said that Burda patterns aren't the easiest to follow, I wasn't going to splurge on expensive material and instead picked up some similarly patterned cotton from Spotlight.
After a bit of confusion around how the front buttonholes were supposed to work, I managed to figure it out:
I have to say that I was a little disappointed initially that the dress looks a little pregnant-y, but it's nothing a high-waisted belt won't fix. You just don't notice it too much on the Burda model since they've shown an action shot.
Perhaps it's my choice of material but I think that the darker material has taken a bit of the summer-y feel away from the dress.
Also not too sure about the cross-back - I have a sneaking suspicion that it might make most people look like they have swimmers' shoulders - but that aside, this design means that normal bras can't be worn without having the straps fully exposed. Not a great look.
As I mentioned, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with the buttonholes so I figured since the design had an invisible zip right up one side (talk about zipper foot issues!), the dress front didn't actually need to button up, so I ladder stitched the 2 front sections together and sewed on 3 buttons just for appearances. This bit probably took me almost as long as it did to sew up the rest of the dress!
Overall I'm pretty happy with the dress for a first attempt but I wouldn't mind making a better version of this, with just one front section for the bust and removing the cross back. I've also found that the skirt section is very see-through as it isn't lined, so that might be something to consider next time.
3 comments:
Good job on your first Burda pattern! I think you did an excellent job!
Hi, I think your dress looks great!! I am working on the same pattern now...did you have any troubles with the shoulders? Any tips?? Thanks!!
Liz
@Angela - thanks muchly - the photo quality isn't the greatest though - I really need to get a better camera!
@ChinaCat - I actually thought that the cross-back might cause a bit of trouble in terms of fit but it actually sits really well on me. I was pleasantly surprised - I'm not usually that lucky.
I have to say that since then I've made the same dress again and made some alterations to the design that work a lot better IMHO. I just need to get off my behind and blog about it *oops*
I changed the cross-back to a more conventional back piece for more versatility and cut the front bust area as a whole piece rather than 2 seperate pieces. I also added in some lining for the skirt as the material I used was quite see-through.
I'll try to get the blog post up this weekend so you can see how different it looks :)
Post a Comment