Vogue 1258 Vena Cava Dress

Thank you everyone for the comments on my Burda dress, I'm still waiting for their phone call, must be problems with the time difference or something....

Having had success with 2 pleats and pockets I have gone the whole hog and made a dress with lots of pleats and pockets, this Vena Cava dress from Vogue's recent releases.

Erica B recently made this and wisely said;

"I like that the skirt tapers off to the hem. This creates a VERY body-conscious silhouette. And the pockets and pleating draws the eyes straight to the hips. So if you're not good with your hips, thighs and butt, walk away from this pattern"


She was not kidding!  My first thoughts when I cut the pattern tissue out were "how on earth are these pieces going to fit on 2 yards of fabric" (they do) closely followed by "how on earth is this back piece going to cover my backside" (only just) and "is it even possible to walk in this" (yes).  The stretch takes care of the walking, but my side seams are swinging to the back a bit, in retrospect one size up at the back would have been a good idea.  (This is a 12, no fitting adjustments).





Not very imaginatively I used a purple ITY jersey, you can see the true colour in these dressform photos below.  I didn't take a photo of the whole dress on the dressform because it looks ridiculous!

I made a couple of minor changes:

• I raised the neckline by about an inch, this is easy to do, just sew up the centre front seam a bit higher
• I left off the topstitching on the sleeve bands.  My thread is not a great colour match, I was impressed with my edgestitching on the bands and thought topstitching was pushing my luck frankly!
• I shortened the ties significantly, they come down to the hem of the dress which looked a bit odd on me.  Erica B tied hers at the back which is another way of dealing with them.

This is quite a different style for me having bypassed the whole tulip skirt trend and I am still getting used to the shape, but it is a really comfortable, yet dressy dress.  I'm a little self conscious about my hips and something about the pockets is not quite hanging right at the lower opening so I may go back and try and fix that.  Anyway enough chat, here are some more photos:

Burda Style 07/2011 - 110 Dress - On Me

Well it's Friday and I have some make up on so here as promised are some photos of the dress on me.

Having already bumped into the tripod Barney also wanted to be in the shot.

I am going to have an urge to stick my hands in my pockets all the time while wearing this dress, I love them!

This is me mucking about trying to recreate the photo from the magazine.  I'm sure Burda will be calling me any day now!

Here you can see that the pockets and pleats stick out when viewed from the side, this is down to the design and is unavoidable, but I can live with it - don't make this if you can't!

Burda Style 07/2011 - 110 Dress

My sewing has been a little haphazard lately with lots of things being traced and started, but for one reason or another nothing was getting finished.  Before my sewing room filled up with UFOs I decided to get my head down and finish this dress - it's from the July issue of Burda Style, #110.  

This is actually sized for petites, but the measurement chart is very helpful so I compared the petite and regular measurements and just added back what I needed in the bodice pieces by slashing them and inserting extra paper.  Strictly I should have added some both above and below the bust, but from my measurements I just adjusted by 1.5cm just above the height of the front inserts so that I didn't have to mess with them, as there is some shaping built into those seams.  

Other than that I followed the instructions - this is the illustrated pattern for the month - and I found them pretty good.  The pattern is really well drafted and everything matches and meets where it is supposed to.  For once I even included the pockets and love them!  Naturally with the pleats and the pockets there is a bit of "pouffyness" going on at the front, which would normally put me off trying a style like this, but it just goes to show you need to step out of your comfort zone and try new things sometimes.  The wide shoulders also help to balance the look as do the contrast front panels.

Here is a close up of the front panels, I just used the reverse side of the fabric on the cross grain, or maybe it was the right side of the fabric, I'm not sure - anyway the other side!  The fabric is like a cotton twill but has quite a different texture on each side, one side sort of basket weave (I used this side as my main fabric) and the other side has a striped effect.  I decided not to add the additional stitching around the panels and pocket edges and in keeping with this handstitched the hem so no stitching is visible on the outside of the dress.

The armholes are very high, I don't know if this is due to the petite sizing but is something to look out for, it's just on the right side of comfortable for me.

 The back view is fairly plain and in dire need of a final pressing!

I'll get some photos of me wearing it in a separate post soon, I feel very Roland Mouret-ish wearing it!

Procrastination Pays!

Warning - pictureless post ahead!

Having been excited about the latest release of Vogue Patterns, when it came to actually picking those I really wanted to buy that couldn't easily be replicated from my mountain of existing patterns I just couldn't decide.  I narrowed it down to 4, but that just gets me into the $25 shipping range for 4-7 patterns so I either needed to add 3 or lose 1 and, well time went by and the sale expired.

Today I received an email that all Vogue, McCall and Butterick are on sale and Vogues are $1 cheaper than the sale of a few days ago.  I am happy about this but I can imagine there will be a lot of cross people out there.  Are you one of them?  I remember they did this a couple of years ago too just after an exclusive Club BMV sale - I was a cross person then and at that point I let my membership of that club lapse (what a revolutionary I am!).

Of course I still have to decide what to get, but at least I can consider all 3 pattern lines this time around.

I also picked up my August Burda yesterday and made a list of about 8 things I would like to make which is a vast improvement on the last couple of years.  Unfortunately next month is folklore time (again) so it might be business as usual.....

Upgrading Blogger

Ok, for Gail and anyone else who needs to know, here is how to upgrade to the latest version of blogger.  I only discovered this was even a possibility when my husband set up a new blog and found it super easy to use.  Fortunately it is also super easy to change so here goes;

Click on the settings tab in your blog (accessible from both the dashboard or the new/edit posts page)
Scroll down till you get to "Select post editor"
Change to the top option "Updated editor"
Click the orange "Save settings" button

Here is the full list of all the stuff the new version can do - List of new features, but most importantly for me is that photos will post where your curser is, you can drag or cut and paste them and move them left or right without having to muck about with the html.  So now we can all post more often???  Hope this helps!