Burda At A Glance Archive Redux

Feb. 2015 update:

Many of us are aware that Burda Fashion has reinvented itself as Burda Style. I looked at their old and new pages in English, French, Italian, Russian, and Hungarian.  Hmmm.  Burda has a very split personality, it seems:  there's no rhyme or reason or consistency between the various language versions.

To cut to the chase, for those of us interested at looking at the last few years' back patterns and their technical/line drawings online, the best archive offered by Burda Style itself is still the Russian site, burdastyle.ru/zhurnaly (meaning, Magazines).  You can also get there from the burdastyle.ru home page by clicking on the second from left word : Журналы in the top menu.  This page will give you access to patterns going back to 01/2004.   

There's also a new and very interesting downloadable and interactive archive at Burdavisor.ru. Using it is a little tricky, as you have find a secondary page and download a zipped html file.  To do that, locate the menu at lower right of the web page, and click on the second from right menu button "Загрузка", as shown by the bright red-orange arrow in the image below:

That will take you to the Zagruzka download page: 

On the Zagruzka page, the red arrow marked 1 shows which menu item you just accessed.  To download the archive, click on the link word "Скачать" that's indicated by the arrow number 2, or click on the word itself on the above line, as it's linked.  The linked archive is a zipped file of burdavisor.htm that's about 830 Mb when unzipped.  Repeat the process any time you want to update your archive to the current month; the downloaded zip file always has the same name: burdavisor.zip. To help you get started, here's the the 15 Feb 2015 file. Open the zip archive and double click on the burdavisor.htm file to open it with your web browser, and then have fun browsing the vertical menu along the left. You'll get the hang of it pretty quickly.  Just remember to double click on the images to access what's linked to them. 

As for online Burda archives that go back further, to years before 2004, the best are still the following Russian language links:  

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/burdahistory/15088/ :  German-language Burda Moden from 1950 to 1988. NB, the web page is Russian, but the scans are of the German magazines.

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/biblioteka/15303/ :  Russian language Burda magazines from 1987 to 2011, then a gap of two years, then three issues from 2014 and one from 2015.

http://osinka.ru/Zhurnaly/2012/ : Osinka Magazines archive.  To make it easier to access the dates box along the left side of the linked web page, I'm linking to the 2012 year, which at present is the last year with all 12 monthly Burda magazines archived on this site.  There are only three Burda issues for 2013 and none for the more recent years.  The nice thing about this archive is that it also has some of the Burda Plus, Burda Kids, and Burda Easy special issues, plus some Ottobre magazine issues for those of you who like to sew for kids, plus a lot of recent knitting magazines, including hand and machine knitting.  

Apr. 2012:

Burda, don't we all love her?  Haven't we all sewn at least SOMEthing from one of her mags? Haven't we adored Burda on the web, and hated the ahem, new and improved BurdaStyle approach to her customer base?  I detest BurdaStyle.  In order to avoid it, I've reverted to Burda's Russian language page, Burda Mir Mody, hah, lucky me to be able to deal with the cyrillic and the language (for moi, language of the oppressor), but for the rest of you being forcibly redirected to BurdaStyle, I do feel your pain.  And yes, I know that I'm not the first to voice these complaints.

I've been buying fewer and fewer of the issues, feeling a tad let down by the oversimplified offerings of the past year.  But oh yes, I do love May '12!  Feb '12 isn't bad either... Still... Burda, if you're listening, it's time to recycle some of your super jacket patterns from days gone by. Like, oh gosh, 103A from Oct 2007. How I'd love to get my hands on that pattern.  Or 116 from the same issue - those seam lines are just begging to be colour-blocked, and what's more current than blocking this year?  Or pretty much just about any of the jackets from 2006 and early 2007.  I love the seaming in those, they're still perfectly current, and will remain so forever.  Are you listening, Burda?  Less loose vacation tops, and more structured garments for us that like a little challenge, please!

I discovered recently that my Burda At A Glance Archive button along the left sidebar is no longer functional:  "Oops, Sorry, you're trying to access a feature that is no longer supported", says Google.  Well, I'm spitting bullets at you, Google, since we both know that you could've ported the link to my Burda Archive to your new style documents format, except your software designers were simply too lazy to deal graciously with your customer base.  Ugh.

On the bright side:  I recently found these amazing historical resources:

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/burdahistory/15088/ :  German-language Burda Moden from 1950 to 1988. 

http://www.ms77.ru/articles/biblioteka/15303/ :  Russian language Burda magazines from 1987 to 2011.

What is truly amazing is that these archives show EVERY PAGE of these magazines.  Well, they attempt to. The execution is occasionally uneven - but for the most part, it's very good.  All you vintage enthusiasts out there, how fantastic is it to have access to the almost Dorothy-from-the-Wizard-of-Oz fashions of 1952?

If you want a more modern link to Burda's patterns, try http://osinka.ru/Zhurnaly/ . Over on the left, under "Osinka.ru", the year numbers underneath "журналы онлайн" (ie, online journals) link to patterns published in Burda magazines beginning in 2001 up to 2012. Page-by-individual-page.  Pretty...darned...amazing.

This is why I've linked my Burda At A Glance Archive button to this here post.  That way I'll always have a quick and efficient way to find the most comprehensive list of Burda archive collections out there that I can find. And so will you!

Acknowledgement:  I discovered the links to these Burda archives while browsing http://joanka-z.blogspot.ca/.  Dziękuję Ci bardzo, Joanko!

Family love-in

After the two fairly intensive projects, ie the coat-dresses (not yet shown) and easy-peasy Missoni sweater-dress (ditto), I turned to some at-home sewing.  It all started with a realization that my son, formerly the family's tiniest Baby Boy, recently redubbed Gentle Giant, has completely outgrown the last pj I made for him.  Time for a new one!

My approach to nightwear aims for maximum simplicity and comfort:  a loose pull-on top with no buttons to press into your skin, and minimal seaming.  Here, the fabric is folded over at the top, so there is no shoulder seam.  There is a straight flat-felled seam across the chest to allow for a clean finish of the kimono neckline.  The top's full width is the whole width of the cotton batik (110 cm).  The curved armhole seam prevents stress points.

The top, a lovely cotton batik, has side slits, plenty of room for GG's future growth, and is long enough to ensure modesty even if not worn with its matching shorts. Boys, you know....

At about the same time, it became evident that my winter dressing gown has outlived its long-ago, original beauteous self.  So I went on a dressing gown making spree.  For all of us:

 GG's is forest green to match the greens of his new pj; Hubby's is wine coloured; mine a nice dark teal.   Though the gowns look pretty identical, there are minor variations to account for height, preferred sleeve length, and the male vs. female front lap differences.

A couple of years ago I'd created two kimono style light cotton dressing gowns at my daughter's behest, one for her and one for me.   After barely a couple of years of light wear the sleeve-body 90 degree angle on mine is showing signs of stress, so I re-engineered the design with a curved body-sleeve transition (and used it in my son's pj, above).

The fabric is cotton velveteen, and its full width is used over the shoulder (as in the above pj, the shoulder is a simple fold with no seamline).  Full sleeve length is created with the add-on piece, which has a very deep, luxurious fold-over that's stitched in the ditch.  Each robe consumed 4 meters of fabric.

Here's the obligatory on-body shot of GG, looking quite Raphaelite: