Burda Style June 2013

Whoa it's June's Burda Style already! It feels like spring has just started but time goes fast. May's Burda didn't bring me much joy, so I didn't bother to review. June's Burda is not the best ever, but there are so many patterns to choose from there's certainly some good stuff.

A shirt dress! With darts and nice lapels, and pockets!

A cute summer dress in mini, midi and maxi length.  Great for at the beach or at a swimming pool. Or just because.

That pleat/split at the skirt is fascinating. I'm not so sure about the gathers at the shoulder and the ones at the waist though. Symmetrical gathers on the bodice would have been better I think, or no gathers at the shoulder. Still, it's a pretty dress and I love the green colour, and the fuchsia is bright and elegant.

 

Look there's that lovely green colour again! Including asymmetric ruching. Ruching is getting more and more popular in Burda it seems, and I'm very tempted to make a ruched item.

What's going on? Another green dress with ruching?! Haha, I love it! This one wouldn't be bad as a wedding dress, would it? Why do I always go for the pretty dresses, when I don't wear them :(

These pants have quite a romantic feel to them, and the pattern even comes with (less romantic) shorts. I like how nice they fit at the hips but are still very wide.

 

the shorts version

Oh, I really like these blouses! It's not very visible in the pictures how nice they are, but the drawings show it well. They have darts and there's two different necklines to choose from. And no difficult placket or cuffs, yay! The beige skirt comes with a pattern as well, but the pockets are so ugly! They stick out, not so nice.

This time we get some mother & daughter items as well. Why don't they make a mother & cat theme? Lots of sewists have cats! The matching mother & daughter dresses aren't that nice (in my opinion). There's only one set that is worth mentioning, and mainly because of the fabric.

They could have made a matching outfit for the (cat sized) lamb as well. The fabric looks like you could make it a project with fabric dye, that would be fun! 

Well, all in all I'm relieved this month's issue of BurdaStyle is way better than last month's! The list of patterns I'd like to make is getting very long...

source of pictures and drawings: http://www.burdastyle.ru

Continued from Yesterday's Post

In short, the Raglan Peplum Jersey Top  is the raglan jersey top from Burda Style februari 2013 #127 (with shirred sleeves inset) with the peplum of Burda Style august 2012 #114. I made it in a dark blue purple thin jersey. It was the first time for me to sew jersey and I was worried about how it would work out, but it was not much of a problem. The fabric didn't curl, but I did get skipped stitches. If I sew very slowly it was ok. Last weekend I got some jersey needles and then no stitches were skipped anymore. The stitches I used were the smallest zigzag stitches on my machine, since I don't have a serger or overlocker.

here's the hem

There's no top stitching, since I'm still in the process of developing my talents for sewing straight seams (I'll learn someday).

here's the neckline

The neckline did give me some trouble. Since I'm already so used to not understanding the Burda instructions, I didn't bother to read them So I just sewed the neckline strip together (so it'd be a circle), folded the fabric in half, pressed it, and sewed right sides to right sides, folded up and pressed. Ouch it was too wide! So I took it out, cut a little off and redid it. After the top was finished I decided to check the instructions after all and they were actually quite clear. The neckline fabric was supposed to be attached as you would attach bias binding (not that I have ever done that, but I remembered from a tutorial). The whole garment took me about 8 hours. Yeah I know that's long.... I'm a very slow sewer. I only mention it so maybe in a year or so I have something to compare it to and see how much faster I became :)

here it is!

Sorry I tried to have some shadow but still got blinded by the sunlight.

Is anyone watching Vikings? It's a great tv show with lots of action and long haired men and women. And great jewelry. Check out Earl Haraldson's necklace!

Earl Haraldson of Vikings source

squeeee!

It's the same necklace! It closes in the front (on the south side of the "medallion") with a screw, and I lost mine unfortunately (I stick some tape to the back to hold it together when I wear it). By the way in the Earl's picture you can still see something beneath the screw, but that is another necklace (he usually wears his together with another necklace).

Maybe the Viking connection is what causes me to always write "attack" when I mean to write "attach". Attack the sleeves, attack the peplum!!

P.S. the link for the Great British Sewing Bee episode 4 (the finale) is over here.

Raglan Peplum Jersey Top

In purple blue (or blue purple?). The pattern is the BurdaStyle 02/2013 #127:

Click here for the pattern

Since I love tunics and peplums and I have no idea when peplums will be going out of fashion again, I had to make this a peplum top before it is too late. So the pattern was cut at the waist and the peplum of Burdastyle 08/2012 #114 was added at the waist line. That's the same pattern I used over here earlier, when I made the purple satin peplum top.

the ruched raglan jersey peplum top

Ok, blogger is giving me a really hard time with uploading my pictures. I feel like exploding while at the same time my eyes are falling shut (I think cats feel like this quite often (at least mine), and it's a very peculiar sensation). So I will give it another go tomorrow and get some sleep now. Sorry for the delay. I hope I'll be dreaming of vikings, hehe.

Yay I Won! and some random bits

Catja from Gjeometry was having an Equinox giveaway! I love her blog and the ever so cute and smart Kitty, so I always enjoy reading it. Her garments are beautiful and surprising and Kitty has his own wardrobe as well :) Catja sure knows how to build up tension and drumrolls in her post. She even made a beautiful poem out of all our comments about the seasons, and making it visual by all the gorgeous pictures she added. She even put some math in it. And then came the drawing..... Kitty worked very hard to choose the winner, checked all the entries personally, and battled a hurricane tunnel while modelling for the camera at the same time! You can read the whole post including pictures of this event here. And he picked my entry! 

The Prize!

Thank you so much Catja and Kitty, this book is going to be very helpful on my journey on learning how to sew! The book I won is "Chic and Simple Sewing" by Christine Haynes and I'm looking so much forward to learning from it. I was dancing in the room when I found out! And also thanks for the other readers of her blog for their congratulations.

Furthermore there are some other sewing related things I would like to share. The Great British Sewing Bee has had 3 episodes up until now, for which the links for watchers outside of the UK can be found here:
episode 1
episode 2
episode 3
Only one more episode to go!

And last week I went to the Hague, after a tip by Aicha from Petit Main Sauvage. There's a massive outdoor market in the Hague where you can find fabric and notions (as well as vegetables, fish, shoes, etc.) I didn't get a lot of fabric, but the fabric that I did get was gorgeous (bluish grey wool) and a lot of notions for an incredible price. I'm certainly going back there! Here's the haul:

On the actual sewing front, I'm working on a jersey top. Which I'm hoping to show you next time!

The Great British Sewing Bee

all the contestants, the judges and the presenter together

There's a four episode show about sewing, the Great British Sewing Bee. I just watched it and I enjoyed it a lot! It's in the form of a sewing contest (actually 3 contests this episode) with very diverse sewers. There's background about the sewers and the objects of the contest, and I like the sense of humour you get to see now and then. For the ones that can receive BBC 2 you can watch it Tuesday evenings at 8 pm (UK time). Since I missed the first episode and it's not available from the BBC site in my country, I was bummed at first because I read about it on several sewing blogs and was very much looking forward to seeing it. But I found a link that worked!

If you're in the UK you can watch the Great British Sewing Bee online through this link.
For the rest of us there's this link.
Edit: here's the link for episode 2
And here's the link for episode 3

The contestants seem to be very sweet and talented, just when I think I picked a favourite there's another contestant winning me over. I think everyone has been my favourite at one point during this episode. See their profiles over here. One of them is Tilly, and I knew her through her blog Tilly and the Buttons. Does anyone know if the other contestants have a website or blog? I'd love to follow them as well.

Preview for the next episode: Patrick undresses and apparently he's got a seam up the back. Really, you need to see this!