Saturday 4 April 2020

Old Burda Treasures

Beginning January for whatever reason, I started searching for an old Burda issue from July 1995 from which I sewed at least 2 dresses when I was in my teens and planned at least three others. So far, I have not found it, but from one vendor in New Zealand, which would bring me to pay more in postal fees than for the magazine itself.

However, I found a few ads on old Burdas from the 2000's and beginning of the 2010' from a vendor very close by. And so I bought two lots of magazines, mostly October and February issues. When I brought them home, I was just so happy with them, it is just soo different from current Burdas (easily 50% more patterns in each issue and definitely more sophisticated patterns). What a treasure!
This, however, also meant that I need a new pattern organization. So far, I could still flip through the few magazines I own or search in the Burda catalogue online, but with the old issues, this is no longer possible.

I ended up digitalizing all of them in Trello, but I would like to have some back up in Pinterest or elsewhere. And I still need to go through my newer Burdas. Taking time to take pictures and categorizing also helped me to pick up my favourites.

And this is how I found this Burda 130-10/2013 coat. At around the same time, I went fabric shopping and HAD to bring this nice wool/linen fabric. They only sold it by coupons of 3m and I did not dare to ask to cut it in half and only buy 1,5m (they do not want to keep coupons under 1,5m). And I am happy, I did so because I definitely used little lit more than just 1,5m.

I played with the pattern little bit, because I did not want to have so much fabric around my hips and I definitely adjusted the shoulders, as usual. The pattern is a petite version, so no length adjustments needed, I just love that!

I cut out the coat just before the covid epidemics really started in Europe and finished it during our second social isolation week-end. So this spring, I will probably not wear it at all, because it will be way too warm when we finish the quarantine period. But I must admit that it was a great social isolation project. The main fabric frayed like crazy, so I ended up catch-stitching all internal seams. I also created my own sleeve-heads and underlined the whole coat for some structure. I must say I am quite proud of the sleeves and the whole silhouette.

The coat closes with little hooks but I do not expect wearing it closed very often. It is lined with some slinky silk and of, course, I had to add my etiquette and the piping.

For a brief moment, I wanted to put a bright orange piping but I did not have enough of it and locked at home, I do not think I would wait for a delivery to arrive. The deliveries of non-essentials currently take quite long which is totally understandable, but I would probably lose all the motivation to finishing the coat.

As already said, there was quite a lot of hand-stitching on this coat but it calmed me down and I really enjoyed it. And anyhow when you are locked at home, hand-stitching is a great way to relax.

The weather seems just perfect for wearing it right now, but I will have to wait :)

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