Burda magazine July 2015

I’m not normally a fan of “summer” sewing since the styles printed by the likes of Manequim, Patrones, and Burda for the summer months tend to all be focused on super hot, beach weather that’s just completely impractical for English summers. Case in point: today in London it’s sunny and warm, high of 23C (73F) and for the most part, that’s a pretty average summer day. In other words, it feels like Spring or Fall do in most places, and I love it. You all can keep your disgustingly hot and humid summers, and I’m happy to take a few useless sewing magazine issues each year as a trade-off!

But surprisingly, this July issue of Burda actually isn’t half bad! There are, of course, a few wholly impractical, wispy beach styles, but there are also designs I could wear…

Speaking of designs which work for English summers, this one’s got ours written all over it! The details of this boxy, yoked shirt are just fabulous – I can’t recall ever seeing rounded placket before, for starters…

Ugh, the fabric choice here just makes this look like a cheap and awful nurse’s costume! And those insipid sleeve flounces, gag.

In my eyes, the best pattern of this entire issue comes from designer Antonio Marras – it’s a great silhouette, and the neckline and hem length are bang on trend. But even better are those angled seams, which are only really revealed in the tech drawing!

I’m not usually drawn to maxi-dress styles, but this halter dress (for Tall sizes) with its fantastic, sweeping full skirt really catches my attention in a way that a shorter hemline version just wouldn’t. In fact, it reminds me most of ballroom dance gowns!

Happy 2023! (Year in Review)

For the past 15(!) years I’ve posted my year in review on 1 January, but not this year. I lost my sewjo around the end of September so I didn’t really have much to blog about. I waited for it to reappear (as I learned a long time ago there’s no point in trying to force it) and prepped a few projects, tidied a bit, planned a bit, and then fell into a massive “Interview with the Vampire” fandom hole (more on that later), and generally was happier in October and November than I’ve been in a long time (completely unrelated to the sewing) but that’s not the reason this post is late.

This post is late because, despite my best efforts (cycling to/from, FFP3 masking indoors with my CO2 monitor and otherwise staying outdoors) I caught a virus of some sort at the office christmas party which left me practically bed-bound with post viral fatigue for 4+ full weeks (no, not Covid, not flu, not RSV, not anything they swabbed for at haematology, but thankfully not EBV either). Like, 21+ hours a day in bed, and if I sat up for more than 15min to eat or drink, I’d have to lie flat for another hour. So sitting up to type was impossible, and I wrote this in pieces on my phone when I could, not being able to put it all together until I started improving a little bit in the past few days.

So apologies that it’s late, and for the blog silence for the past few months, but hey, 2023 can only get better from this dismal start, right?? Without further ado, let’s have a look back at 2022…

Happy 2021! (My year in review)

What. A. Year! I’m not even going to attempt to sugar-coat things, and any attempt to try and put things into perspective just sounds like a cliché after all this. But for a year where I was essentially under house arrest since March, it’s surprisingly not all bad. Above all else, I’m grateful to have spent the time with my husband and that we both were able to continue our office jobs from home at full pay and remarkable support. My sewing was both a welcome distraction and a balm in this year of chaos and uncertainty.

I’m going to try to use my usual year-end format again, though this was clearly a year that broke all attempts to contain it so let’s do what we can (clearly a motto for the year!)…

Happy 2020! (My year in review)

Happy new year! I always like to take the opportunity on the start of a bright new year to look back on the year that was – what I made and loved, what I made and swore at, and other big life milestones that will make 2019 stand out in my mind. And because I love stats, I also like to take a step back and get an overview of what I’ve been making to get an eye for any trends that may have escaped me at the time…

Happy 2019! (My year in review)

Happy new year! It’s traditional for me to reflect on the year that’s just finished on the first of a new year, and this year’s a weird one because I’d love to just say “this year sucked”, but there were some fantastic things that happened this year amoungst all the sickness, disappointment, frustration, and hard work. So let’s try and focus on those.

Happy 2017 (my year in review)

Woohoo! It’s a fresh new year! 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’s also a look back at what I’ve been up to in the last twelve months, which I always find to be a helpful exercise!