Search Results for: manequim april 2012

Manequim April 2012

This time of year is my favourite for Manequim issues, as the Brazilians begin Fall, overlapping with our decidedly cool and wet English springs, it means for a brief period I can actually wear the patterns when they’re printed! So let’s have a look inside the latest issue…

Manequim usually contain one or two easy accessory patterns, and this month it’s patterns for two cute collars, plus some instructions for beading them.

The white skirt is a design I’ve seen done over and over before, but I love the white dress, with the pleated interest on the shoulders!

I absolutely love the asymmetric blouse, as seen on the cover, as well as its cool, one side seam layout! I’m not too sure about the shoulder bow, though – I’d probably leave that off, but this one is definitely on my To Sew list now!

Burda magazine April 2016

I’m catching up with the Burda magazine issues I missed while I was ill, so even though I showed you my picks from March’s issue last week, here I am with April already!

This isn’t the best garment photo, but I love the seaming on this dress, which Burda have very cleverly accentuated further with their use of stripes. Well done! I also live the asymmetric neckline, which makes me think of the neckline I chose for my wedding dress back in 2010!

Manequim November 2012

I wasn’t overly impressed with last month’s issue of this Brazilian pattern magazine (Remember there are other Brazilian pattern magazines too!), but this one’s got enough fancy party dresses in it to keep me happy, even if it’s overly summery for my personal use right now!

Now here’s some pattern versatility we can all use: a detachable peplum to wear with any skirt, trousers, or dress. This lets you be totally on-trend without any commitment, because when peplums go out of fashion again, your skirt/trousers/dress can still be worn without it!

Manequim are so good at the short cocktail dresses, and this little sheath dress has a really intersting crossover neckline and some cool pleats at the hips to add interest.

The designer inspiration feature revolves around Kate Spade this month, and I really like this dress in particular, because it doesn’t have a waist seam, which seems to be fairly unusual for this silhouette. The jacket is covering the neckline in this particular shot, but the square neckline is really flattering, too.

Manequim March 2012

Wow, the seam allowance guide tool giveaway has been SO popular! Go over and enter if you haven’t already, because the makers have just given me two more to give away, so you’ve just tripled your chances!

If you’re looking for justifications for using said tool, then I put before you Exhibit A, the newest edition of the Brazilian pattern magazine, Manequim:

The lovely comedienne Fluvia is showcasing the Plus selection this month, which is just a nice, slim pair of trousers paired with a blouse. But look closer and you can see this is a new variation on the cowl-neck theme, as it’s a drapey collar morphed into a traditional shirt rather than a shell top!

This sort of “sheath dress with cool sleeves” is exactly what Manequim do best, and it’s what I think of as their signature House Style. I totally love the pleated sleeves here, though I hate how the skirt pockets don’t match up with the bodice seams! It’s easy enough to change, but it just seems like a sloppy design oversight to me.

Burda magazine March 2016

I know this issue is a bit old now (replaced by the April issue which I’ll be reviewing shortly), but it’s got some really great designs in it and I didn’t want it to just drop by the wayside because I was ill. Besides, I’ve even got the German edition, too (scroll down to see why!).

This cover makes me pine for Spring already!

First up is a pattern for a dress which looks like separates. I like that it’s both casual and can hide a large dinner underneath, which makes it pretty practical, too.

This dress cleverly has an integrated side tie like something out of Pattern Magic. I’m super excited about this pattern because I’ve kept a note of a very similar dress from the July 2012 Manequim magazine that I’ve been wanting to make for several years but frankly, I trust Burda’s drafting more, and I like the raglan sleeves on this one better than the sleeveless Manequim one, too. Definitely high on my To Sew list!

Happy 2016! (My year in review)

Each year I like to take the first of January to look back on what I’ve sewn in the previous year. So while this post is a celebration of the new year, it also helps me to put into perspective the year that has just gone. Somehow I always think the year has been a bit low on finished makes until I put everything together for the year’s collage!


Click the image to see it better, or right-click here to see it in a new tab to get a better look!

Tip: If you’d like to skim back through the posts for the above projects, you can click Gallery in the top menu, which will only show you finished projects, without all the magazine reviews and in-progress reports getting in the way! (Though a few of the makes in the bottom row I haven’t blogged about yet!)

The Year in Stats

In terms of pattern companies used this year, I made:

  • 25 FehrTrade patterns (I put my money where my mouth is I guess!?),

  • 9 Seamwork magazine,

  • 6 Self-drafted (including traced from RTW),

  • 4 Jalie (well, the same sports bra pattern four times!),

  • 3 from the Great British Sewing Bee: Fashion in Fabric book,

  • 2 Burda Style magazine,

  • 2 Style Arc,

  • 2 Orange Lingerie,

  • and 1 each from La Maison Victor magazine, Named, Paprika Patterns, Imagine Gnats, Simple Sew, and Kwik Sew.

By my count, I made: 21 tops, 19 trousers (including leggings & shorts), 2 jumpsuits,
2 dresses, 10 pieces of lingerie (bras, panties, slips, etc), 1 bikini, 2 jackets/coats/cardigans and zero skirts (!). I made presents for my mom, sister-in-law, niece, and nephew, and James also received four tops and a pair of lounging bottoms this year, the lucky guy!

Honing in on a jeans pattern

Even though I finally finished my pink trousers and lace teeshirt I mentioned last week, it’s been so hot and sweaty that I haven’t quite managed to do a photoshoot for them yet. Everything’s written so as soon as I do, you’ll get to see how great they are, honest!

I also managed to cut out a Kwik Sew exercise top, but not start sewing it yet, but what I really wanted to talk about today is the ongoing process in deciding which jeans pattern to use as a match for some heavyweight, non-stretch denim in my stash. So when I say that I’m “always thinking two projects ahead”, you now know it’s the truth!

If you remember back to my Spring Sewing Ideas, I had two different KnipMode jeans patterns that I thought I might use:

However, I found out soon after that the 2012 KnipMode one was for stretch wovens, which dis-counted it for this particular bout of jeans sewing.

The 2005 one looked very promising, but when I made a muslin of it the look was not good – ill-fitting in the waist and hips and way too wide in the legs. I’m sure I could fix it with plenty of time and patience, but with such an enormous pattern stash it just wasn’t worth pursuing further!

So I went back to the drawing board, otherwise known as my online pattern catalogue, and had a look through all the magazine issues I’d tagged “jeans”. This was a lot! So as I flipped through, I took screenshot segments of the ones I liked the look of, and renamed these files with the brand and pattern number, and shoved them in a special folder.

A rare dud of the highest order

Last weekend I cut into cut into one of the oldest fabrics in my stash, a dark turquoise silk charmeuse bought in January 2009, to make the cover top from the Burda April 2012 issue:

There are so many things wrong about this pattern that I’m going to revert to list form to get the rant out of my brain:

  • The recommended fabric is silk, yet the instructions don’t tell you to sew French seams, or indeed finish the raw edges at all. As far as I can tell, even if you follow their insane instructions, you’re left with a triangular area of raw seams at the shoulder. If I’d liked the top enough, I’d have had to make my own weird facing to handstitch on to cover this.

  • There’s a ridiculous amount of ease in the bodice – way more than Sorbetto, for example, and that’s also a non-bias, slip on shell. I ended up cutting this with the front and back pieces a centimeter or two off the fold simply to fit it onto my narrow silk, but I checked first to make sure it’d not be too small. And having completed the shell, I can say that it’s still on the loose side, even with my reductions!

  • Facings on a silk. WTFOMGBBQ? Why?? I said Nuts! to the facing and did a narrow bias edge (in leftover silk from my birthday top which I still had lying around) on the neckline, and did a two-step narrow edge for the hem.

  • Burda tells to to cut an extra wide hem allowance on the sleeve edges, press in and out (and shake it all about, do the hokey pokey- oh wait) and mess about with it until the sleeve is entirely completed… and then sew an invisible hem by hand. On silk. And it’s a reeeeeeally long hem. I’d rather eat glass, Burda. The much better option here would be to cut a regular hem allowance, and machine-stitch a narrow edge or rolled hem before basting any of the sleeve pleats. Realising they’re crazy and trying to do this later is much more difficult (ask me how I know).

  • The sleeve instructions are absolutely incomprehensible. Burda would have you flip the entire pleated edges around the neckline and back to the armscye at the shoulder, which a) completely contradicts the photos, and b) there isn’t enough seam length to do. So I had to try and make the best of pre-basted pleats, attach to placement lines that may as well have not existed (since the pleated edges didn’t match up anyway), and a mess of raw edges (see above). My best attempt was not good enough.

  • And finally, when I tried the top on to see if I even wanted to carry on finishing the raw edges, the sleeves are just ugly. Less “quirky chic” and more “80s shoulder pads”. Ugh.

Brighton & Bank holiday sewing

We had a long weekend here in the UK this weekend, and I’m pleased to report that I made the most of it! On Saturday, James and I made an impromptu trip down to Brighton, and we stopped off at Lewes on the way down. Our main objective in Lewes is always the Harveys Brewery shop, but I also discovered The Stitchery just across the road upstairs in the Riverside Centre, which stocks a wide variety of fabrics, embroidery floss, yarn, and haberdashery. I checked my handy “sewing shopping list” on my phone, and bought black waistband elastic and trouser hooks, both of which I needed. Very sensible of me, I know.

But the real temptation was walking right past Ditto in the North Laines in Brighton, and I told myself I was only allowed to buy ONE fabric there, so it’d better be a good one! In the end, this gorgeous butter yellow floral silk charmeuse won out over a similar yellow coloured, textured, ex-Blumarine crepe.

Florals really aren’t my usual fabric choice (and I would’ve never bought it from the terrible photo on Ditto’s site), but in real life, I was just captivated by it, and I’m thinking I’ll need to pair it with some edgier like jeans or my leather skirt to diffuse the twee-ness.

After our big day on Saturday, on Sunday we didn’t leave the boat at all! I spent most of the day doing sewing stuff, starting off with fusing all the interfacing onto James’s reversible smoking jacket pieces. I find fusing interfacing to be really boring at the best of times, but it’s beyond teeeeedious with a mini ironing board and mini iron! Once that was all fused, I then moved on to hand basting all the pocket placements (it’s a fantasy jacket, so there are five pockets!) and then basted the bound buttonhole placements, too.