Search Results for: manequim june 2013

Manequim June 2013

As I mentioned last week, I had a great week for post while I was ill, including the latest Manequim magazine! Since Brazil is in the southern hemisphere, we get some wintery clothes, though there are still a fair amount of sleeveless options that would work for British summers, too!

oh. my. god. Plus sized lingerie!!! And they’re fantastic, wearable, and sexy designs, too – a bodysuit, bra, and panties in size 50 (B110cm W94 H116, just fyi). I’m terribly jealous that these aren’t in my size!

In the soap star style section, we’ve got this long sleeved sheath dress with interesting bodice panels that really looks like something I’d wear in the winter!

The designer pattern section this month is Jil Sander, whom I totally love! We get patterns for slim trousers (in multiple sizes!), the red batwing jersey top, and the blue dress with double-layer draped bodice. On top of the great designs, I actually really love the styling here, too – solids in vibrant colours, minimalist aesthetic, and letting the clean lines speak.

Burda magazine June 2013

I’m a tad late with my review of the latest Burda magazine (or as it’s known these days “Burda Style” – but that just makes it too confusing with the other zillion things they do with the same name), but a) it arrived in the midst of my World tour, b) it’s competing with both the April and May Manequim magazines, and c) well, I have made something from it already so I think I’ve earned a pass!

In any case, this is a surprisingly good issue, despite being a summer one!

First up is this sheath dress with angled side panels and hand-stitched details. On first glance it appears quite vintage-inspired, but the sharp seaming in the line drawing actually shows it’s a pretty modern draft!

I chose this next image not really for the batiste skater skirt (which isn’t really my style), but because OMG is this the first black model Burda have ever used?? And I realise this is the “street style” section so she’s not really a model per say, but seriously, I cannot believe how white Burda’s models are, even when they’re showcasing African or Moroccan or Asian inspired patterns they still use white models!*


A bit of an aside, but as I was travelling the other week I saw a massive advert for the German Wings budget airline with three cabin crew ladies: a blonde, a brunette, and a redhead. To which I chuckled to myself “oh, it’s German diversity!”

Next up is a nice figure-hugging knit dress with a cowl neck and gathered side seams. It’s also available as a top, which I think would be an excellent summer basic, or even for layering under jackets.

Happy 2013!

As is traditional, I like to take the first of a new year to take the opportunity to look back on what I’ve sewn in the previous year. So without further ado, here’s a visual reminder of 2012!


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 upper left menu, which will only show you finished projects, without all the magazine reviews and in-progress reports getting in the way!

By a mere glance at the collage, it looks like I’ve sewn less this year than in past years, but really I just became more efficient with my photoshoots and so most of the photos contain more than one garment! That, and there were a few that weren’t properly documented, oops.

The Year in Stats

In terms of pattern companies used this year, I made: 11 Burda magazine (more on that in January as I finish up my Year of Burda), 6 Papercut Patterns, 5 Jalie, 4 Pattern Magic, around 4 self-drafted, 2 Manequim magazine, 2 Young Image/My Image magazine, 2 Pattern ~ Scissors ~ Cloth, and one each from: Lekala, Simplicity, Vogue, So… Zoe, Christine Jonson, Wiksten, and KnipMode (oh how the once-mighty have fallen!).

By my count, I made: 19 Tops, 15 pairs of Trousers, 4 Dresses, 4 Skirts, 3 Coats/Jackets, plus two slips and a handful of pairs of panties, an iPad cover, some running armbands, and a boat skylight cover!

But the biggest number of them all – 21 of the above were for running! omg.

Look magazine – August 2015

I briefly mentioned the Argentinian pattern magazine, Look, when I told you all about buying magazines in Argentina last month, but it’s time to take a deeper look into what’s inside!

I totally love sewing pattern magazines – you get so many fashion-forward styles for such a low price, and it’s fun to see what fashions are like in different parts of the world. So far I’ve bought pattern magazines from Germany (Burda!), The Netherlands (KnipMode and My Image), Belgium (La Maison Victor), France (Fait Main), Spain (Patrones), Italy (La Mia Boutique), Brazil (Manequim, Moda Moldes, and Molde & Cia), and now Argentina, how exciting! It doesn’t matter if I can’t speak the language the magazine is written in – as long as I can translate enough to pick the right size and fabric, and identify the pattern pieces, I can sew together most garments without instructions (though usually you can just look at another similar pattern’s English instructions and follow along with those instead). The Google Translate app can translate most text on-the-fly if you point your phone’s camera at the magazine text, too, which saves you from having to type in all the text yourself.

But back to Look! This was the current issue when we were in Argentina in August, along with a “mother and baby” issue from the previous month which I didn’t bother to buy (having several kids pattern magazines already and nieces and nephews into adult sizes now). This particular issue just captured my heart, as it features a huge amount of SS15 runway designs! Remember back in the 1990s and early 2000s when Burda used to do International Collections magazines knocking off all the runway looks? Well that’s precisely what this issue of Look is all about!

I’d say a good half of the patterns in this issue are straight off the runways. Look is a bit different from the other pattern magazines in that the instructions are in a separate booklet from the glossy magazine and the pattern sheets. This means you kinda have to have both open at the same time to see tech drawings next to the runway photo, but is a bit easier than flipping back and forth in the same magazine. If you buy Look on a newsstand, make sure you get all three pieces! Even though the instructions are in their own booklet, these are the briefest I have ever seen in any pattern magazine, so clearly they’re not intended for beginners…

Another observation – like Manequim magazine, most of the Look patterns are only offered in one or two sizes, and the sizes are tiny!! Like, Japanese tiny. Which is strange because even in Buenos Aires the people on the streets seemed to be fairly normal European-sized… Seriously, I’m a size 48 in this magazine, which means I could only fit into one or two of the patterns in this entire issue. (By comparison, I’m a 42 in Burda, La Mia Boutique, La Maison Victor, and KnipMode, and 44 in Patrones and Manequim). Usually with Manequim, most patterns I like are either in my size or a size up or down, which makes it easy to just fudge into fitting, but grading up a bunch of sizes is just too tedious to me.

Happy 2015! (My year in review)

As I do every year, I like to spend the first of a new year to take the opportunity to look back on what I’ve sewn in the previous year. So without further ado, here’s a visual reminder of 2014!


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 upper left menu, which will only show you finished projects, without all the magazine reviews and in-progress reports getting in the way!

The Year in Stats

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

  • 29 FehrTrade patterns (no surprise, really!),

  • 7 Burda magazine (aka Burda Style),

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

  • 4 KwikSew (well, the same one pattern four times!),

  • 3 Manequim magazine,

  • 3 Cake Patterns,

  • 2 Style Arc,

  • 2 Vogue,

  • 2 Orange Lingerie,

  • and 1 each from Simplicity, McCalls, ThriftyStitcher, Christine Jonson, Seamster, Named, Sinbad & Sailor, Drape Drape, House of Pinhiero, and Jalie.

By my count, I made: 31 tops, 19 trousers (including leggings & shorts),
5 dresses, 4 pieces of lingerie (bras, panties, slips, etc), 3 skirts, 3 jackets/coats/cardigans, and 4 bags. James also did well this year, being made a winter coat, 2 shirts, 2 cycling tops, and a dop-kit bag.

And I realise I’ve been sewing a lot of running gear but the total number even surprised me – 34 of the above were for running (though not all for me)!

The above may sound like a lot of sewing, but even this is only a fraction of what I’ve actually sewn – I couldn’t really include all the garments sewn for the Great British Sewing Bee, for example, or those made for custom clients (of which there’s been a LOT!), or for the book I’ve been working on, either. In all honesty, I think you could probably double the amount shown above and it’d be closer to the total output!