BWOF 06-2009-131 Vest morphed to dress

This dress is not really my work. My daughter traced it out, scaled down to a 34 at the top, made a SBA, altered the length, the belt carrier length and position, cut it out, and sewed most of it, but it took longer than she expected. She went away to school camp for a week before her Sydney trip, so I finished it off for her (pockets, belt carriers, buttons and button holes, some topstitching. This is a 2 and 1/2 dot pattern, so I am very proud of her efforts. I am hoping she will review this pattern on patternreview.

Carolyn, who has an eagle eye, kindly commented that the blouse I posted about yesterday would look great with this vest/dress (I put the vest up in show and tell at stitchers guild already). I think it does too! The blouse was made specifically to wear under the vest. We picked out the contrast collar band because the leaves and vines in the print are the same khaki as the vest/dress. The fabric is cotton gabardine (twill) from Michael's Fabrics.





Gail asked a little while ago how I get Burda World of Fashion Magazines so quickly. Europress, who distribute the magazine in Australia have it shipped by sea mail, so the issues available in Australia in some newsagents (but not where I live) are around 3-4 months behind publication date. I subscribed to BWOF directly from Germany via the website, and my issues arrive by airmail, usually only a week or two after the American distribution, and 5-6 weeks after the European distribution. I had to telephone Burda in the middle of our night, and speak in extremely bad German (coached by my German born friend prior to the attempt) in order to finalize the credit card details. (They quickly found an English speaker for me after the lady answered the phone). The telephone number and address is in the front of the magazine. I renewed the subscription recently as the original subscription ran out in June. I wrote to the German address,(in English)and was a little concerned when there was no reply, but my June issue turned up on time, and my credit card was billed for just under $122, which I think is a bargain. I use at least one pattern from every issue, and could not buy 12 full priced individual patterns for twice that price. I was lucky to have it renewed on a day when the Australian dollar was feeling a little robust.

BWOF 09-2008-115 White shirt

I have wandered off the straight and narrow with my sewing. I was wrestling with a BWOF dress for myself, and somehow after the second toile was still dreadful, my mojo went walkabout, so I have been knitting. However, as my June sewing was so frantic, I have some unreported sewing to disclose.
My daughter loved the safari vest outfit in the June BWOF. The deal was that she would make the vest (morphed to a dress) and that I would make her a shirt to wear underneath, so that she would look fabulous and non-childish in Sydney whilst on holidays. It is tricky to dress well when you are 14 and do not want to appear 10 years old, and your mother does not want you to appear 19 years old :).
I looked through my patterns, and found very few shirt patterns for a size 6-8 (Australian) or size 34 European. As I was feeling rather lazy, grumpiness ensued when I thought about scaling down a pattern for such a basic item. Fortunately for me, I eventually remembered this fabulous blouse by Trena and when I went to look at the pattern review, I found that there was a standard collar version as well.

Link to Technical drawing
I have darkened the photographs so that the details are visible.




Trena found that this pattern did not require a SBA, so I thankfully left out this step and cut a straight 34. I also followed Trena in extending the back darts up past the shoulder blades to remove the excess fabric that gave a Quasimodo look to the non altered garment. It is a reasonable fit IMO, considering that I made it whilst my daughter was away on camp, and I am sure that she grew whilst she was gone.The only additional alteration (other than Trena's) I made was to shorten the distance between the shoulder and bust point slightly. I think I will cut the sleeves down to above the elbow once the weather warms up, so that my daughter can wear this useful blouse into spring and summer.