Meeting the 1.1 meter challenge

I traced and placed the pattern for BurdaStyle 10-2008-131 on my fabric, and I can hardly believe it.  The jacket's pattern pieces actually fits, with oh so much room to spare (none, actually!), on the yardage - er, one point one meterage - that I have.  I haven't trimmed all the seam allowances yet, but they'll be 0.5", which is half the nearest distance between any two pieces.  

The fabric appears to be a uniform beige-cream herringbone, but it actually has pastel colour lines in both directions: pink and yellow lines run horizontally while purple and green run vertically. I used these colour lines to pin the fabric "true" together correctly, and to align the grain lines of the pattern pieces with the fabric. 

I managed to get the back, back pleat, front, pocket welts and front facings matched with respect to the location of the yellow and pink stripe...

....and, as shown above, the sleeve fronts are matched with sleeve backs. 

Even the collar and collar stand (aka collar band in Burdaspreche) fit.  The under-collar band is on a bias with a centre seam.  The under collar, also with a centre seam, is on grain, because that's the only way it could fit in the the only space left:   in that area outlined in blue between the two sleeve pieces.

So, yeah, I'm kind of tickled.  I did of course have a plan b...and c.... there are plenty of simple collarless jacket patterns out there - but it's nice to have Plan A start out so auspiciously.

A little tip for these tight to fit fabric demands:  I found making a pattern piece for Every Single Piece (except the undercollar, which is drawn in), no matter how trivial, even stupid little belt loops, was really important.  Otherwise I'd have been guaranteed to goof somewhere along the line by spacing this or that too generously, or forgetting to make room for one item or other.

So the cute little jacket is cued.  Yes, cued - because I have to  finish this colour-blocked dress that's been hanging around for, oh.... how long?

Six weeks. Awful of me, right? It's edging dangerously close to UFO territory.  I don't like UFOs - time not well spent, and all that.  Lucky for me this little number just got a little motivation to get finished.  

My great conflict of interest, though?  My garden is finally awake.  And when it's sunny I do NOT want to be indoors.   Outside, there's always something fun going on: 

Chipmunk with peanut and hosta

Black and white warbler

Pine squirrel aka chickaree

Once the garden comes alive with these and lots of other cuties, slaving over a hot sewing machine and an even hotter steam iron demands psychological oomph.  Stucktuitiveness is the word of the week!

Spring colours

It's looking less and less likely that my trench coat will happen this spring:  once the snows melt here in mid-continental Canada, the season springs into summer in an eyeblink.  No matter, I still have a lightweight (purchased) trench that wears like iron and will easily last another season or two or ten.  And, honestly, I prefer to make day clothes.

To that end, I've fallen off my no-fabric-buying wagon, and grabbed a few little pieces recently.  First, a little bit of a "super-duper" tan-grey wool from Fabric Mart. Expensive, yes! amazingly expensive at first glance, but I've seen how this kind of superfine wool wears:  your grandkids will inherit the garment - in my case, a pair of slacks - that you'll make out of it, and that's no joke.

Then I grabbed a little bit of a wool-silk blend, also from FM, literally for a song. So things average out, right?  Unfortunately by the time I put this lovely cream-tan herringbone in my shopping cart, there was only a yard left - gulp!  Ok, I thought, so I'll make a llittle summer skirt out of it.  

How do the two separate purchases connect?  Well, once I had both of them at home, it became blindingly obvious that they were made for each other. The tan of the super-wool and the tan of the silk-wool mini-houndstooth are perfect together.  Even if my camera's digital response to the two doesn't quite show it,  IRL the wool at left is a good match to the houndstooth's tan.

I like the two of them so much, they can't both become bottoms..  The tan wool will definitely become slacks. So my miniscule little bit of silk-wool has to become a top of some sort.  A jacket? a miniscule, cropped, teeny tiny jacket?  Luckily my 1 yd (0.9 m) purchase arrived as a hugely generous 1.1 m. I'm thinking that if I use remnants of the superfine wool (after the slacks are made) for undercollar, facing, and/or cuff or hem facings, I might even be able to eke out a jacket with a collar out of it. Gosh how I'd love to get just a teeny bit more of it - would't it be just amazing if FM found another yard, or even half a yard, lying around begging for a loving home?!

There's one more reason why the silk-wool houndstooth would be a great top:  it has a rectangular check pattern on it. The weft check is spaced 4.75" apart, and is yellow and pink, while the warp check is spaced at 4", and is green and purple.   It's a soft, subtle, and delicious check, nearly invisible in these pics.  I'm not going to work hard at matching the jacket pattern to the check, but I'll definitely refer to the colours for whatever tops I'll be making to go under it.

At this point, with the pattern not yet traced, so this is still a bit pie in the sky, I'm hoping to eke out this little jacket:

The jacket is BurdaStyle Magazine (formerly Burda World of Fashion) pattern 131 from October 2008. The collar and facings may make fitting this particular pattern onto 1.1m quite a challenge.  Next step: trace and find out!

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:

Jalie jacket revisited

A little over a year ago I wrote about my trials with Jalie 2795. The fleece I picked was too thick and unyielding, the pattern consequently too unforgiving.   I enlarged the upper sleeves and chest area to match a jacket I long had and loved, and repeated the exercise more successfully with a nicely patterned poly knit with a soft brushed inner side.  The jacket turned out comfortable and cuddly warm, and served its purpose very well through Kandahar's winter and Canada's subsequent fall, except for one thing:  the fabric pilled so horribly that barely a year after the making of it, the jacket looks badly worn and very tired. It's become so ugly that it's no longer wearable. Not to complain or anything, but this was an expensive fabric, and whereas I don't object on spending good money on good quality, I feel badly misused when my purchase doesn't live up to its implied promise.  

Fast forward to now: Jalie 2795 number three!  

For this one, I used Jalie's body seaming to fashion advantage, and colour blocked it.  As well as widening the chest area, though only half as much as the previous version, I shaped the seams a little by taking in the waistline. 

The grey is a boiled wool-rayon blend from Fabricland - only 1.1 m sufficed for the front, back, and sleeves, and that's after 10% shrinkage to prewashing.  The black is a crepe-faced wool knit which I "boiled" myself by washing it in hot water on a long cotton cycle, and air dried.   

I re-drafted the multiply-seamed sleeve into a front plus back joined by a 4-cm wide central band from neckline to wrist.  

There are in-seam pockets on the front-side front seam, lined with grey active wear mesh fabric.  The left front has an inner zipped secret pocket.  To avoid front face draglines, I built a free pleat into the bottom of it - hence the apparent droopiness. 

The  back:  colour blocking, top stitching, and the lay of the back collar.  I had to shorten the sleeves  by 8 cm!

How do I feel about this version:  so far so good!  I hope the use of natural fibres will prevent large scale pilling, for a start.  I wore it on a plane just a couple of days ago, and it's lovely in wear, not scratchy, breathable, very comfortable.  Given my penchant for black slacks and shoes, it creates a sporty yet chic look -  a perfect urban casual for me.  I like grey as a counterpoint to black more and more - it's a softer, kinder neutral.

I really ought to give this little garment a playmate:  something like a new pair of black jeans.