Burda 7576 - Jacket, Uppercollar

Not much happening in my sewing world this week unfortunately, I've only managed to work on joining the uppercollar to the front facing.  Why is it that instruction writers always seem to go light on words in the really tricky areas of the construction?  Is it because for them it's an easy step, or, perhaps they're just as confused and keep it brief so they don't get found out!  Anyhow, it was tricky and fiddly getting a nice neat corner on the join - it was a 3rd time lucky situation!

Feels like progress has been slow after such a good start, but I know that once the collar is done, the rest should come together quite quickly....

Next Projects...

This weekend I headed up north to Norwich.  It was a lovely town, a lot of that old-world English charm, and good shopping too!  There's something quite nice about wandering around shops on old cobbled streets and through arcades. 

One of my main reasons for the visit here was a fabric shop - Anglian Fashion Fabrics.  I always have to visit fabric shops whenever I go somewhere new, it's a slight obsession of mine!  This shop though had a wide selection of fabrics, and I was quite impressed with the seasonality of them - for instance they had several shades of camel wool blend fabric for coats which was big this winter - but my local shops just did not carry any.  They also had racks of sample fabrics from suppliers for sale, buy now or miss out stuff, these were at good prices as well.  Anyhow here's my picks:

From the left, the grey will be a dress from this new seasons Vogue, V1222, from the Anne Klein New York range. 

The next 3 will be for designs from the BurdaStyle 01/2011 magazine - 102 blouse in the black and grey spotted satin, 113 skirt in the black, and the 108 dress in the printed jersey.

Burda Style magazine patterns

Whow!  Trying to copy the Burda Style pattern pieces is a bit of a struggle isn't it?  It's like a maze of lines!

To save me the daunting task of tracing them out, I've photocopied the bits that I need (I think!), but even just identifying the right lines to cut is hard!  I had read they were difficult, but hadn't quite appreciated just how much.  Check out this example:

I'm going to need my concentration head on for this one that's for sure!

Burda 7576 - Jacket, interfacing

I'm interlining my Burda suit jacket with hair canvas following the guidance in my tailoring book.  This book describes 3 methods - custom, machine and fusible.  Originally I wanted to follow the machine method to speed up the process - I didn't want to get bored with endless mindless hand stitching - however some of the steps for machine method are a little light on detail.  So now I'm doing a combination of methods to incorporate the custom method too. 

First I worked on the undercollar.  For this I used the machine method.  I needed to cut the interfacing on the bias, and being a newbie to bias cutting, wasn't sure how to do it!  So all I did was cut it on a 45 degree angle to the selvage using my mat grid lines as the guide.

When stitching interfacing onto the fabric, the machine method stitches will show through to the jacket fabric.  It's only a problem if you put the collar up, but as I won't be I'm okay with this. 

Then the collar needs to be wrapped around a tailors ham and steamed to set in the roll.  Here I wasn't sure how long I needed to steam it for, and how I could tell if it was done enough, so I gave it a good blast for about 5 minutes.  Now only time will tell I guess .  Looks cute hey!

When I moved onto the jacket front, I switched to the custom method.  I ignored the pattern's front interfacing piece and instead used the jacket front piece (& slightly altered it to take a chunk out from the inner side). 

There was a fair bit of hand sewing to be done - yawn.  However, strangely I actually found it really satisfying work!  I learnt new stitches - catch stitch, padstitch and uneven permanent basting - and it was all kind of relaxing.  Perhaps I drank too many camonile teas....     

I steamed the lapel on the roll line as well to set it in. 

For the back interfacing, I used the back pattern piece folded up to give a bit more support across my shoulders. 

That's an awful lot for one day!  This has so far been a really enjoyable project which was much needed after my last one.

Simplicity 2440 - Part 5 - Time for a break!

After the disaster I had recently with my first attempt to cut out the skirt for this pattern, the extra fabric has now arrived in the mail, and I set about re-cutting.  

What I'm trying to do is eliminate the pattern gatherings and just have a simple A-line skirt.  As the skirt waist pattern pieces are wider to accommodate for the gathers, I need to reduce them down.  The first time I attempted this, I just halved my waist measurement, marked that on the pattern, and drew a new line down from there.  This was obviously a school-boy error, as my hips are bigger than my waist, and as such there was not enough material to fit around them.  Doh!  All part of the learning experience right?!  This time however, I followed instructions for making a skirt block and worked out where to mark the new lines.  This was much more successful!  I was probably a bit too generous with the ease measurements though - but better to have too much material than not enough!  Anyhow, here it is so far:

I still need to adjust the side seams, finish the lining, do the hem and fix the shoulder straps in place. 

Gosh, so much to do still!  I really think this dress and me are needing a break from each other for a while.  It's been a rocky relationship so far, and some time apart will allow me to start loving it again so that I can give it the attention it deserves....

Previous posts on 2440 can be viewed here, here, here and here!

Burda Style magazine 01/2011

I have just discovered Burda Style magazine and I'm soooo excited that I did!  I purchased the January issue, and absolutely love about 10 patterns in there, and all those patterns for just £5! 

My favorite item is the cover dress (dress 108).  The pattern sketch of this dress is actually really bland, like a sack really, but once made up and with a belt, I think it's unreal.

My only problem now is trying to get hold of the fabric used in the magazine.  I've discovered a site which sells a range of the fabrics used in the Burda magazines - it's in German but Google Chrome can translate the pages easily - http://www.alfatex.de/epages/alfatex.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/alfatex - but they do not have this particular fabric!  Any ideas from readers will be greatly welcomed!

Burda 7576 - Jacket, muslin

I've encountered a problem with the dress.  It's now on hold until more material arrives in the post!  I seem to have miss-calculated a pattern alteration and cut the skirt front piece too small, disaster!  However, crisis was averted as luckily the fabric store had some left - 75cm left to be precise, but I only need 64cms luckily!

And so I've moved onto my next project in the meantime - the suit jacket to match the skirt previously made.  I'm using a Burda pattern for the first time - Burda 7576:

I want this to be a proper tailored jacket, and so am using a book to help me - Tailoring, a step by step guide to creating beautiful customised garments.  I'm going to use their machine method which combines many of the hand tailoring techniques with the sewing machine to make it faster.

Today I made the muslin.  Following the book, I cut the front, side, back, under collar and sleeve pieces only and constructed it.  I'm pretty happy so far; sizing is good (for once), darts and waist line in right place and lapel seems to sit well. 

I need to make 2 adjustments only - first is to mark on the under collar roll line (Burda seem to have omitted this from the pattern) and secondly, eliminate the back peplum gathering and replace it with a pleat, which I think looks less homemade, what do you think?