Pale pink Burda December cover dress

Are you excited yet? I sure am, because this dress is the last in my one-Burda-per-issue challenge for 2012! I set out to sew one pattern from each issue, and I’m pleased to reported I completed it (though much more on that in a bit – I’ve got a rundown post coming).

The final garment in the challenge is the Burda December cover dress (Burda Dec 2012 #112) even though I technically completed in on New Year’s Eve, I’m counting this in 2013’s tally since I’d already written up my end-of-year post by that point!

You may remember that I sewed up a muslin of this over the holidays, but I took inspiration from the long version shown in the magazine and made my final version in some pale pink viscose crepe from Stone Fabrics Super wonderful – flowing, drapey, takes a nice press (though that means it also wrinkles readily!), and has one crepe side and the other rather smoother (I used the crepe on the outside). You really can’t beat it for £6/m! It’s fairly narrow though at 137cm wide, so if you also choose to make the shorter hem length with long sleeves, note that you’ll need 3 meters of it.

This pattern (which also has a longer hem length with long sleeves) has the illustrated instructions for this issue, and man do you need them! It reminded me of one of those Vogue designer patterns where it doesn’t actually look like a dress until the very last step. Note that if you buy the pdf pattern from the Burda Style site, you get the same full, illustrated instructions that appear in the magazine.

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!

I'm in Burda magazine!

I’m in the German edition of Burda Style magazine this month! I’m so excited!!


See? There I am right in the middle, along with the quote “I was immediately entranced by the draping”!

Someone at Burda HQ dropped me an email months ago asking if they could have some hi-res versions of my pale pink twist dress photos to use in the magazine, but it was so long ago that I’d assumed they dropped the feature or something. But no, a German edition of the fabulous November issue appeared in my postbox on Friday!

I had already scanned my subscription English edition for my review (going live tomorrow – it’s worth waiting for, I promise!), so I flipped through the German version to see what differences there were. The first thing I noticed is that it’s a heftier magazine, and there are ads in it, along with more editorial pieces (like a feature on a Philadelphian artist), more fashion spreads (like this season’s ankle boots), and that all the pattern instructions and pattern sheets were pushed to the back, and in their own separate magazine!

A Year of Burda Magazine Patterns – Challenge Completed!

I (silently) set myself the challenge to sew one garment from each issue of Burda magazine (aka BurdaStyle) in 2012, and I’m proud to say I completed it! I’m not the sort of person to make New Year’s resolutions, or proclaim lofty goals to everyone who’ll listen – I’m more the sort to quietly commit myself to something, and see if anyone notices what I’m up to before the completion… I do know that Kristy has also been keeping up with the Burda challenge this year, and it’s been fun to see which patterns she’s chosen from the same issues (and on occasion we selected the same pattern!).

There were some roaring successes, a few fails (both my fault and not), and some that I changed my mind on only after months of wear. So I thought it was worthwhile to have a look through all the projects from this year, and my thoughts on each looking back from now…

January


Rating: 9/10
Link to original post: Great Basic – Grey Flannel Trousers

At the time I said: There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering about this design, but I just thought it looked nicely versatile, and something I could wear to business meetings as well as just team with a teeshirt if I fancied it.

My thoughts now: I don’t think these look as nice in the photoshoot as they do in real life. I genuinely love and adore these, and have worn them pretty much nonstop, at least once a week to work, since I made them a year ago. I wouldn’t change a single thing about this pattern, and the silk pocket linings fill me with glee everything I slip my hands inside. I really do need to make some more of these!

Peter & the Wolf trousers

I was so excited when Papercut Patterns released their new collection of patterns before Christmas and saw that it included another trouser patterns with amazing seamlines, curiously named Peter & the Wolf. It happened to coincide with a free worldwide shipping deal they were doing so I bought it directly, but I see the new collection is available on Sewbox.co.uk now, which might work out cheaper for Europeans.

I sewed this up in early January (right after the pale Burda dress), but I’ve been thwarted by inhospitable photoshoot weather two weekends in a row, so it was now or never this weekend, even though I’m still not fully recovered from the shingles. Forgive me if I don’t look as cheery as usual!

Holiday sewing update

Some (rather racy) panties

Remember how I had flu for 3 weeks earlier this month? Well lucky freakin me, because I got ill again on the first day of my holidays. I’ve essentially felt like crap since two days before Thanksgiving, arrrrgh. So on Christmas Day, I did a little bit of comfort sewing, in the form of some crazy, racy, leopard print and black lace panties.

Avert your eyes now if you’re of a gentle disposition!

I’d never buy leopard print of my own free will, but I’d bought a lingerie grab bag for a pound a while back, and this came from there, and I added some scrap black stretch lace to the sides. Nobody need know what my tastefully dressed exterior conceals…

Burda December cover dress muslin

The big project I wanted to tackle over the holidays is the Burda December cover dress (Burda Dec 2012 #112).