The Dreamed Jeans Dress

This year I was offered the Burda subsrciption and somehow, it makes me less motivated to sew from the magazines I am receiving and I am somehow less inspired by the models. It really feels like this year, Burda focuses on the basics or extremely original models. We'll see how that goes for the rest of the year.

However, this dress in the March issue got marked almost immediately. I even liked the fabric, well, let's be clear, I wanted exactly this dress.

Then, the lockdown came in, I was sewing other stuff, till I came across a favourite Burda sewist who made it as well. Now, I decided to make it.

I started looking for the right fabric, either very light jeans or tencel and realized that tencel in the right colour is actually quite hard to get online. And the light jeans was almost the same. Actually, most of what I found were clear or very typical jeans colour fabrics. Me not wearing blue very much and not being used to wearing jeans, I wanted either a very dark blue or something little bit different. I ended up finding this blue/grey light jeans with some elasthane at tissus.net. This was in the middle of the French lockdown and most people over the internet were complaining of long delivery times with them. I ordered anyhow, because... well, I did not find better. To be honest, when ordering, the site announced 1 month expedition delay and did not lie, the order was sent out exactly after one month. Count 10 more days for delivery, because while in Germany DHL was rather quick, in France, it was handled by the post and the post service was extremely disappointing during the lockdown times.

 

Sooo, after much waiting, I could finally muslin and sew the dress. (well, you could say that I could have muslin it even before but I was making other stuff as well).

I did my petite adjustments and took away little bit of volume in the sleeves. I also slightly narrowed the decorative ruffles - I actually found out that "decorations", pockets and other details are always the same size, which does not make sense, it is often way too big for me (being on the bottom of the size chart) and it must be too little for the 42/44 sizes. So I am now rather careful and adjust this kind of things by easily 0,5-1cm.

As for the inside, I frenched the big seams and bound the rest. I even used the facing, a rare case for me.

Here, I must admit that I did a huge mistake when cutting the dress. I forgot that the front of the dress needs to be cut in 2 pieces to account for the zip. I pondered about cutting it anyhow but losing even 2cm around the bust and waist would probably be too much. Then I saw an idea of sewing a lapped zipped and decided to go for that. It was definitely not the easiest way, but the zipper is partially covered by the ruffles, so even though it is not perfect, it is OK and it works.

I did sew the fabric belt and I will definitely wear it with it as well, but I like the dress both ways!

The Klimt Dress

Once upon a time there was a collection of Klimt inspired fabrics sold in my favourite fabric shop. I had already seen them on the internet, but when I checked on them in real, I could not resist. At first, I wanted to buy the Kiss inspired one, but then managed to convince myself that while it is an extraordinary fabric, I would never ever sew anything wearable from it.

So in the end, I opted for a compromise, the grey fabric with little golden triangles. The fabric is a simple cotton, but the shade of grey is really cute and the golden freckles really change the final aspect of the fabric.

And then the fabric remained in my stash until this year's lockdown when I wanted a quick project of a dress without the need of fitting. By chance I have seen somebody on the Burda site having sewn the Burda 102-05/2019 and I remembered that I have already made this dress (and that I liked it a lot).

All planets were aligned and the project was super quick. I tried to "pattern match" as much as possible without overstressing, the dress is of course lined with a fine black silk, what else ad the success was almost guaranteed.

PS: we had to change a place for taking pictures this time, and honestly, the light was not so good, next time we will hopefully get back to our usual place

Panel (Dress) Story

I fell in love with this dress years ago, probably on the first months of me sewing again six years ago. I bought it through Burda site when it was still available (the pattern goes back to 2012). I bought the fabric in 2015 (!!!), keeping track of my fabric stash is useful, but sometimes frightening. Part of the white fabric got sewn into something else in the meantime.

The fabric is a very nice, rather heavy and lose linen which I bought in three colours back then. The blue got sewn into an amazing summer dress, and then used for some baby projects, the green and white patiently waited their turn.

As I am now working from home for more than two months and definitely will for yet some time, I am sewing rather consistently, so the time came to get to these two pieces out and get to the Burda Panel Dress. Also, since I am working from home and basically living in casual dresses (so much more comfy than sweaters and leggings), I thought that I should get ready for when the weather gets warmer and I will still be at home. (Of course, we all wish to return to the pre-covid normal, but I do think it is happening this summer, and even if... I can still have one more summer dress, right :)

Back when I purchased this pattern, I have read a great blogpost of a sewist who applied all the couture techniques to sewing the dress and me being an obsessed with nice finishes on the inside, I got little bit carried away as well.

In the first place, I wanted to line the dress, but did not have enough of white lining and I am not really ready to go fabric shopping to Paris (aka take public transportation), so I had to find another solution. Also, a linen summer frock does not have to be lined, per se. But a combo of linen and no lining means that the finish needs to be perfect.

Who says perfect, says Hongkong-finish EVERYWHERE. And so, I went. I think the biggest challenge was definitely the curved seams in the front. Also, I wanted to iron the seam flat after clipping, but you could basically see it on the white part which I hated. So I did a very little bound seam, pressed to the green part and catch-stitched. 

All other seams are bound and catch-stitched for most part as well and it just looks soo nice on the inside.

I must say that I am so happy that I have finally sewn this dress and that it really looks exactly as I have imagined it.

I believe it will be great for wearing inside, as well as outside.

A Super Quick Project

I must admit, it has been a few months that I have sewn anything so quickly. Since working a lot from home, I was practically living in my Monettas and Netties in the past weeks and was loving it. It definitely feels great to wear cute and comfy dresses at home. However, when the temperatures increased mid-May, I kind of struggled to find summer equivalents. My living room and thus working space is oriented to south-west, so very warm very early in the year.

Since the prospect of going full time back to the office is nowhere close (or at least not communicated), I thought I might sew something little and cute for summer home office as well. Also, I had 80 cm of this fibranne viscose I used at the beginning of the year for a mid-season dress and was really looking for an idea on how to us it up. I know that when lucky, I can squeeze a dress from 1m of fabric, so I was hoping that 80cm could work for some little number.

I wanted something similar to the famous Bella dress sewn twice last year, so I reused the skirt and was looking for a nice and interesting top. The help came from Burda 04/2016, a magic magazine number from which I must have sewn at least half of the patterns already. I used the top 120, for the cute front opening. Unfortunately, it is a long size, so I shortened the pattern pieces, I adjusted the width to match the skirt pieces and hoped for the best.

Magically, I managed to just cut out the dress from the fabric ans the rest was just a smooth sailing. I cut everything out just before lunch and by 5pm, the dress was ready. It rarely happens to me, because I like taking the time on a project, hand sewing, but after the summer seersucker (blogpost to come) jacket it was a nice palate cleanser.