BurdaStyle 10/2014 - 101 Dress

Well it looks like the sequin cardi is a hit, must be that sparkly time of year!  In case I have inspired any similar makes, Nancy asked a good question in the comments about whether the sequins bother me at the neck.  To be honest I hadn't even thought about that, my sequins really are tiny so I think it will be OK when I wear it for more than 15 minutes!  I guess a solution would be to bind the edge with something or try the other pattern I featured and make the collar band in a plain fabric, could look fabulous, sort of like a tuxedo look!  Carolyn recently made the short version of 6844 with a contrast pleather band for example.

Back to todays post....

This dress is a bit of a departure to the shape I've worn lately, but I like trying new things and this pattern appealed to me - at least the line drawing did.

Burda showed two versions of this pattern, one in a lovely ombre matellasse fabric which let's face it is all about the fabric that I have zero chance of finding and one in fabrics that look like they were pulled out of the stash while blindfolded!  Still, at least we can see the pattern lines in the fashion photo.

The latter put me off doing full on colour blocking, but I still wanted to mark out the different sections somehow.  I decided to add rows of topstitching in matching thread.  After the first couple of panels I felt it was a bit too subtle and that I was wasting my time, not to mention thread, but the thought of unpicking anything was worse so I soldiered on.  I'm glad I did, once the pieces were put together they looked much better and I like the sort of sporty look it gives the dress.



I used a cranberry doubleknit fabric for this dress, you don't need such a stretchy fabric although Burda does say fabrics with some stretch are ideal, I think either works.  Since I added horizontal topstitching on the hip yoke I decided to keep the zipper to avoid popping any stitches.

It proved to be really difficult to photograph this dress, the colour reads as a bright red and it was hard to capture the details.



Doing all the top stitching was boring and quite time consuming, but other than that the dress went together pretty easily.  Those inset corners can be a bit tricky, but if you take your time, mark the fabric properly and use a friendly fabric they should be ok.  This pattern is the illustrated course for the month so the instructions are detailed, I always do my inset corners in two stages, stopping and starting at the corner rather than trying to pivot the fabric, Burda suggests the same method.

The end result is a really comfy and cosy dress in a cheery colour perfect for gloomy chilly days.