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.

Anatomy of a boucle

It's spring break here at home, so I have a bit of time to play.  Over the past couple of days I gleefully reacquainted myself with my "tiny" stash.  I pondered various colour & fabric combinations - one seemed too automney, another too summery... This one, in grey with pink and blue (mostly) thrown in to cheer it up seems like the perfect between-seasons fabric.  It's lovely and soft, lightweight, and, of course, wool.  Wanting to get enough of the pink and blue fibres to get a Pantone match, I frayed out a few of the threads.  The result surprised me:   

The bottom loopy thread is a boucle'd pink yarn.  The three rows above it are very fine yarns that grade from a cream to a dark grey at regular intervals.  My biggest surprise was the "blue thread. It's actually a highly complex concoction of thickish blue and beige yarn punctuated by little "self-lumps", and completely encased in a "stocking" made up of two very fine black yarns.  

And that's only on the warp. The weft is mostly black and a rusty sort of beige, and some of those threads are also spun together from very two different coloured fibres. Wow.  I had NO idea that boucle could be this complicated.  

I have the threads lying on some grey wool crepe, of which I seem to have a tonne.  A jacket and grey crepe wool dress would be a nice start.... then maybe matching slacks, a skirt?  The pink is the dominant non-neutral, and when separated, it's a surprisingly clean, bright, cheerful pink.  I don't have anything very lightweight in this colour, but I do have some light pink linen - so the grey boucle could work nicely as a coverup for my refrigerated office in summer, with a linen dress underneath.  

Right now I'm working on another knit wool dress in Missoni.  Third time's the charm.  Of the two I made previously, I really like the bias cut, so I'm repeating that here.  Because it's much easier to place bias layout pieces individually, I made the full complement of complete pattern pieces out of cotton broadcloth.  

I got 1.5 yds of this fabric, which is perfectly enough for both a bottom band and a wide cowl.   

So:  that's tomorrow's project. Goodnight, Miz Scarlett:  tomorrow is another day....

Grey linen jacket: pattern answer for Unknown

 A while back I posted an action shot ;) of my grey linen jacket in "A different kind of embroidery".  In that post, I called it a Montana jacket, as it turns out, wrongly.  It's in fact a Sandra Betzina pattern, Vogue 7610.  It's an old, old pattern, not available from Vogue any more, not even in their out of print category, but I spotted a copy on ebay today, so obtaining it isn't entirely out of the question!

There's a lot of seaming in the body, per the line drawings:  fitting opportunities, anyone? 

I omitted the breast pockets but left the pocket flaps, updated from a traditional to an asymmetrical trapezoidal shape that I thought played well with the seaming lines below it.

Trapezoidal pocket flap

Nice pointy back yoke....

The second jeans jacket  I made, in peach-tan linen, was also a Betzina - not Montana :) - jacket:

Vogue 1036.

This one, Vogue 1036, is still available in the Today's Fit category.  It has rather less seaming on the body, but more than makes up for it with the very fanciful sleeves!  I particularly liked its between-the-seams pockets, so I borrowed that detail for the grey one as well: 

Bottom waistband is at left: I rotated them, but blogger rotated them back, grrr!

 I used a mixture of serger and french finishing.  Serged vertical seams of the body are held down with topstitching.  I gave the yoke some nice hand-basting TLC, and frenched both top & under sleeve seams. Since sleeves might be rolled up on occasion, I wanted them to look finished.

This poor jacket and its matching slacks spent six - count'em! - months stuck in an unaccompanied baggage barrack box, and arrived home only recently.  Judging by the water staining here & there, they got a little wet in transit. They're now soaking in a hot solution of oxy and borax, getting ready to face the summer season.  In March?!  Why not summer in March, asks the eternal optimist.

26 March: a small update to show jacket in full, front and back.  It's  freshly out of the washing machine, spanking clean, very wet, and very unabashedly wrinkled. Dried like this it'll be easier to iron when the time comes.