Burda August....Finally Here!

Since the magazine FINALLY arrived, this weekend I finished BurdaStyle 8.2010.140, a shirred dress with cross-over front. I decided to use the animal print knit I had for that rather than use it for another version of the Muse dress. The Muse dress is great, but so distinctive I don't think I really need more than one. So, I used the knit for the Burda dress instead.

I have to say that I am a touch on the fence about this dress. I made some changes because the original was, as is always the case with Burda, rather revealing. Here is the image on the model:

The first thing that I did was raise the neckline. As you can see on the dress, the cross-over falls under the bust:

Does anyone else feel like slinging that neckline under a very large bust just looks....questionable? To me, it just looks like "the girls" are trying to escape. I changed it so the crossover actually comes up over the bust, making for a much less revealing front:


I also changed the finish on the edge of the neckline from a facing, which I was afraid would "flip out," to a binding. I stretched the binding as I was attaching it so the neckline wouldn't gape. I also used a slightly beefier doubleknit..which I thought would be better at hiding the "hail damage."

Here is the finished dress (with head chopped off because while I could bring myself to wriggle into the spanx on a Sunday, I couldn't bring myself to fix my hair):


Overall, the shape is nice, and it is comfortable, but can you see one of the issues? If you look at the model photo:


You can see that the shirring/draping makes a series of U-shapes, my dress does this, too...but what happens on mine is it makes the front skirt drop slightly:

I don't know if this can be fixed by more artfully arranging the shirring, or if I should go back and try and hem the front shorter....I am torn as to whether it even matters or not. You can also see something else in this photo, and that is the nice shaping in the back. The back is sewn with princess seams:


The center back seam is very nicely contoured, and the fit was great for someone with a backside like mine.

The arranging of the gathering was a bit of a pain. I ended up laying the whole thing out on the floor pinning, basting, and gathering. The first attempt I ended up with some weird bunching in the armpits and ended up taking the basting out and redoing it with the gathering pushed slightly lower, and taking in the front width slightly. I have to be honest, I don't know if this is an issue with the Burda draft, or the result of my raising the neckline. I am leaning towards it being a result of my tinkering, since Burda is normally drafted much better than the Big 4 patterns.

However, in the end I think I will wear this for a while before I make a final decision....it is so different from anything I normally wear, I don't know how much of my "meh" feeling about the dress is maybe just because it is so very different from anything I normally wear.

Making a long-sleeved dress did make me want to get started on some fall sewing, though. To that end, I cut out a trench coat for fall:


I am always a complete disaster when it comes to coats, so for the shell I got a dark grey cotton/poly twill. If the poly doesn't keep me from making a mess out of it the next time I manage to say, spill a coffee down the front of me, hopefully the fact that I bought it in the same color as most of the stains I get on myself will help hide my clumsiness.

I also bought some chocolate brown small-wale corduroy to make another version of the Hot Patterns coat dress:


I have never sewn with corduroy before, so we'll see how much of a bumble I make of this!

I hope everyone else had a productive weekend! I will probably be slowing down a bit on my productivity now that the semester has started. I am teaching TWO undergraduate classes this semester...not the most fantastic idea I have ever had, but I'll muddle through!