Floral blouse, or: when fabric determines the pattern

Normally, I decide on a garment first, find a likely pattern, and only then seek the fabric for it.  In this instance, though, I looked at the fabric and thought, this can be made interesting.

I had 3 yds of this silk charmeuse, and used some of it to line a jacket.   This remnant - about 1.5 m - is just enough for a long sleeved blouse.
The print, as you see, has some peculiarities - I highlighted one of them with the two orange pins and the ruler. Also, there's only one flower-free border along the selvedge (shown): the chryssies are printed all the way to the selvedge on the other side.

The print has a nice small scale abstract as background. Since I'm not much of a florals type of person, I chose to highlight the flower-free edge in my blouse.  Two widths of the abstract-only edge  along the front, when worn under a jacket, would conceal the flowers completely.

Since the fabric demanded a pattern with a CF seam,  Burda 10-2011-128, which I'd used recently to make three blouses, was an obvious choice.  I'd already altered the Burda pattern at the shoulder and armscye from the dropped shoulder sleeve to a standard set in sleeve. To make this blouse a little different than the other three, I now altered the pattern further:

1. dropped the shoulder seam 4 cm towards the front 

2. added two pleats to the upper front panels at the above seam

3. converted the collar ties to a stand-up collar

4. finished the front neckline with a facing 

5. widened the sleeve and shortened it to bracelet length, finishing it with a 22.5 cm/9" circumference closed cuff (no buttonholes!!!)

Burda pattern at left, my alteration at right.  The green lines at the front and on the collar mark use of the flower-free selvedge. At 1.5 m, there was exactly enough of that selvedge for the two front panels and the collar. The collar is a simple rectangle, folded in half lengthways. 

I find it much easier to alter a successfully used pattern for small variations like these than to hunt for and test an entirely new one that's as likely as not to come with its own set of new size and fit issues.

  

Even though the fabric was narrow, I was able to lay out the pieces in such a way as to preserve a continuous strip along the floral selvedge.  I turned that into a scarf, of course!

And here's the result: a two-tone front...

...and a very chrysanthemum back:

The stand up collar, neck opening, and the chrysanthemums give it a faintly Japanese vibe, which I like a lot.

But under a jacket, we're very serious indeed:

...where the blooms only play peekaboo: 

that is, until you flash'em: 

Both blouse and jacket play nicely with the matching scarf:

Styled with chunky modern silverware to reassure myself that I haven't fallen into a Victorian time warp.

Are we done yet??? It's c-c-c-cold!

A moment like this, when I get to decide on one small item to fit in with my personal style, is what makes sewing so rewarding to me.  

Burda 12-2008-113 python print blouse

I'd used the 12-2008-113 pattern back when it was new, and made four tops out of silk charmeuse.  They wear beautifully and still look great, in fact are terrific except for the fact that they show wrinkles more than I like. I loathe ironing my clothes (ironing during sewing doesn't count).   As a working person, my morning time is limited, and what little of it I have is preferentially devoted to talking to plants and squirrels or running. So it's not surprising that I shifted my silk allegiance from charmeuse (always fabulous as lining) to types less likely to wrinkle, such as crepe and jacquard.

I got this beefy silk crepe at the beginning of the year (before my Stashbusting pledge) from Emma One Sock. It doesn't wrinkle at all.  And the pattern and colour scheme are fab.  

The pattern repeat is even from selvedge to selvedge. It looks uneven only because a bit of the fabric is folded over along the left edge. 

So gorgeous, in fact, that willy-nilly pattern placement wasn't going to happen.  Since I was aiming to make this top to go along with my recently made blue jacket, I wanted to emphasize the blue pattern details, so I placed the python zigzag at CF and CB.

This is a raglan-sleeved pattern, and the sleeve is made of two pattern pieces: a back and a front.  As I was laying those on the fabric, it occurred to me that I could emphasize the zigzag on the sleeves as well by combining the two pieces into one piece with a curved dart at the top. 

One-piece raglan sleeve keeps pattern details intact.
I lengthened the princess sleeve to full length.
The sleeve hems are lightly shirred with 3 mm elastic.

 That little tweak worked very well.  Fortuitously, the width of the garment is such that the zigzag is also repeated at the side seams, though imperfectly of course, as the above pic shows.  That's what the pattern would likely have looked like on the sleeve if I'd blindly stuck to the two-piece sleeve pattern.  

How do I like the top?  Well enough for not having verified my prior thoughts on it.  The upper back is a little tight when I hunch forward, so I'll try to cure this problem in a future version with either a CB box pleat or widening the outer sleeve a little, or both.  And I ought to have remembered Burda's penchant for low necklines: a bit more of my bony sternum is visible than I care to show. It can and will be camouflaged with a necklace of some sort, but still. The next version's neckline will be 1" higher.  Maybe 1.5" higher. 

Spot the lady cardinal on the birdfeeder over the left shoulder?

Fortunately, I had laid out the pattern pieces carefully and had enough yardage to leave a nice wide strip of selvedge-to-selvedge fabric.  I sewed this into a 45" long tube and now have the perfect ascot to cover up my excessive frontage.  Together, it all looks great under the jacket.

The blue jacket is now nearly wearable, but all my bottoms are in shades of black or grey.  Navy, or something with navy, would be a good idea for a well coordinated outfit.  

Last words?  I'm learning to be more patient with my sewing. I did quite a bit of basting as I went along, and french-seamed the whole lot, even those curved darts at the top of the sleeves, enjoying both the process and the result. Yea! 

Now I need more silk crepe. Did I really say that?! Oops, the wagon is wobbling already!  I-must-resist--I-must-resist... 

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!

White blouse #1 finished, and planning the second

Without much ado, blouse #1:

And here, with the belt - which I made loooooong enough for sure - wrapped twice around.  No doubt it'll also look better without the second belt holding up my jeans under it: you can see how it thickens up the hipline (yuk!).

 

You can also see just how very light is this fabric - doing a turned edge really wouldn't have worked, I fear. 

 

Completely see through - it'll never be worn IRL without a tank or cami under it.

Evaluating it for the design, I had deliberately made the shoulder line a little dropped, but now that I see it in action, I do believe that I'd prefer those seams to sit on, not fall off, my shoulder point.  Easy enough, and I already shifted them upwards by 1.5" before I put the pattern pieces away.  The waist darts in the back look like they could be brought in towards centre a little as well.


I'm thinking that my second blouse will share a few similarities with this one:  a cut-on collar and a waist tie.  I plan to base it on Burda 105-6-2009, a pattern which I already used some time ago to make this reversible silk dupioni jacket:

This one has an absurdly dropped shoulder.  You might think that this was my poor quality fitting, but not so! I cut my usual 38 and stay-stitched the necklines to ensure they don't stretch, and, if you look at the model jacket on a dummy, the dropped shoulder is quite evident.  Maybe someone in the drafting department forgot to shorten the shoulder of a jacket sloper originally intended to have linebacker shoulder pads (hello, eighties)?!   which of course are impossible to put into a reversible garment.  Whatevah - I'll just shorten the shoulder seams so the sleeves actually reach my shoulder. 

Here's what I like about this jacket:  the armhole princess seams, which shift the waist tie closer to centre, from way off on the side seam.  I'll change the collar-less lapels to a cut-on collar, and, instead of making it reversible, I'll -probably - add a facing as I did to the lightweight shirt above. Or, if I choose a heavier fabric, just do a facings-less hem and front edge, though I'll probably do at least an interfaced undercollar.

Trolling for trousers

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. I've been madly rushing my olde Kenmore to Produce, Produce... and Produce even more.

The biggest hurdle of my upcoming high hot desert wardrobe was the fact that I have NO summer slacks. None. In summer I wear dresses.  I admit to having made two pairs in lightweight black silk a couple of years ago - one dupioni, one jacquard -  and have already worn one of them literally to death.  But traipsing around China's sights during a very hot couple of weeks one September not long ago convinced me that no no matter how light, black will cook you.  They did.  Black at 44C would be hazardous to my health (and, given the wardrobe directive I'm subscribing to, I'd be correctly suspected of being mentally defective).

When pressed to the wall, I'll concede to wearing RTW tops, blouses, etc, especially in a not too sartorially demanding working environment.  But finding lightweight heat-tolerant slacks in the Great White North in December?  Methinks not.  So my most critical need was for pants, trousers, slacks.    Remember, they'll have to ride me through both winter & summer seasons, in a dirty, dusty adventure.  And I'll be sharing laundry facilities (no, I won't be doing it myself, heavens!) with 4000 likewise dirty & dusty companions.

I gave myself October to produce as many as I could.  With 6 days to go, the count stands at (HOW many?!!!) seventeen.  Count'em.  Please.  Dirty. Dusty. Wear once, then throw in the wash. 

I made the first two (that's the olive linen and brown crinkle rayon in the left column) using standard trouser technique:  darts, zipper, zipper guard, waistband.  Of course, this took some time, and I literally freaked. At that rate, I'd still be producing trousers in January! And have no time to build a proper wardrobe! EEEEK!

Now, speaking of proper wardrobe, I decided it'll have to consist of:
1. trousers: see above ;)
2a. in winter, rayon knit and merino wool tees per Jalie patterns
2b. in summer, linen, cotton, and silk crepe (yep! I love it!) sleeveless tops
3a. jackets & 3b. lightweight shirting overblouses over 2a & 2b as the obligatory long-sleeved cover-ups.
4. a few sunhats

I'll make one warm fleece jacket, and likely purchase a 3 in 1 parka (breathable rainproof & windproof shell with zip-out fleece lining jacket inside, for you out there unfamiliar with the term), if out of time to make.  

Back to my eeek moment, I switched technique to elasticated pull-ons.  Boy that really helped me put on some speed!

As things stand, two are crinkle rayon; two crinkle cotton; four stretch cotton; one a techno stretch cotton-nylon; one a linen-rayon; one an amazing lightweight linen-silk; and the rest are plain linen, in various weights.

I varied them with different degrees of relaxed fit; different pocket shapes and placements; and even added faux front zippers, cuffs, and sewn-in front & back creases to a few.  You'll have to forgive me for not boring you to tears with a pictorial of each pair on my behind, but 1. there's no time, and 2. you might just start getting the "look of the dusty day" in four months or so.  Stay tuned!

By Saturday, I felt I could afford to return to tailored shapes, and cut out four jeans-style pairs, using the jeans construction but Jalie's more relaxed trouser rather than skintight jeans overall fit, so as not to feel like a steamed sausage.  Lucky me, I already made each of these in the recent past, so I could cut, sew, and not worry about fit in the slightest.   I added large patch style cargo pockets, and pretty much finished the four over the weekend, excepting the waistbands and hems.  Exhausting, much?  Yep, it was a sweatshop here. Especially with two of them being in a check that needed to be matchy-matched.  Painful, 'twas. 

Oh, and some four others still need hemming.  If worse comes to worst, and I run out of time, I can always hem them "over there".  That's the plan.

Next up:  blouses and tanktops.  I joined Sewing on the Edge's "never too many white shirts" for that - timely, oh yea.  Impeccably timed: thank you, Barbara.

Courtesy of the internet.

 Roll on Tanktop (or is that, top of the tank?) November.