Burda Style 02-2010-106 seersucker hiking blouse

Poor Burda. I feel so sorry for the designers sometimes, having their snazzy fashionable clothes turned into practical garments in practical fabrics that are then unstyled with a bucket hat and hiking boots.



 At least the location is superb
 near Bicheno, Tasmania)
Here is Burda's version from their French website. (no technical drawing available there)

 It is a boxy front buttoning shirt with stand collar, long sleeves with cuffs and variations in length and front placket (Version 105, 106A and 106B),  with a slightly shaped over the shoulder yoke. These details are not easy to see in the magazine.



My version, dear readers, was a product of my nearly endless search for the perfect travel garments for the idosyncratic demands of my husband's  our family's holidays. You may have gathered from my blogging absence that I have not been near a computer very often for the last month or so. Part of this was due to a family camping/walking/cycling holiday of 13 days in the beautiful state of Tasmania. The first week of this holiday was all bush/beach/National Park camping, (in hiking tents) which in translation means cold running potable water if you are lucky, and definitely no laundry facilities. A shirt you can wash in a saucepan and trust to mostly dry overnight hung up on a tree branch is highly desirable. An absence of ironing requirements, coolness in wear and sunprotective styling are equally desirable traits.
This shirt came up trumps. All detail photographs were taken of the unironed shirt (eg, as if one were camping), after several weeks of heavy wash and wear.
Fabric: 100% cotton seersucker from Michael's Fabrics, trimmed with shirting cotton from the same place.
Fitting modifications: Square shoulder adjustment, a full bust adjustment via the add-a-dart method, and sleeve length adjustment.
Design modifications: I stupidly misplaced the bust darts, due to measurement errors that may have had something to do with the generosity in volume of a certain glass of wine, and then could not unpick them neatly, so, remembering Shams' masterful use of the double dart  I added another dart placed as much above the correct place as the original one was below and pretended that this was deliberate.  The second dart is very, very skinny, an essence of dart, adding only a minscule amount of shaping.




The Burda shirt is a mullet style in the version I orginially cut out, with a long back and relatively short front, both cut straight across. I did not like this after I had cut it out, so added length to the front after rotating the fabric 90*.


 I then shaped the hem of the shirt to a slight curve at the sides.



With these changes I managed to make a bog standard shirt instead of something fashionable and Burdaesque ;) I quite like the  tunic length, as I can now wear this as a swimsuit cover up or over leggings for the uber casual outfits ubiquitous amongst campers (unless you are Andrea, who has raised camping clothes to a new level)

I used David Page Coffin placket application, rather than Burda's, in a contrast fabric which I also used in the collar stand.



I also used the David Page Coffin collar and cuff application construction techniques. I used self fabric as interfacing for the collar, stand, cuffs and plackets to assist in keeping this shirt as cool to wear as possible.

I divided the yoke in half and cut it on the bias for a chevron effect.

 The yoke was applied using this fully machine sewing method for a lined yoke.

Outcome
I wore this frequently in Tasmania, both unbuttoned, as a jacket over a tank top for sun protection,  and as a regular shirt, either tucked in or worn loose over the waist.



It looked almost respectable when I had to wear my hiking clothes in Hobart ( the camping gear and bike took up all the luggage allowance, so the clothing all had to fit in our carry on bags). I did deeply regret not having something amazing to wear  when the fabulous Carol came into the city in her gorgeous polka dot dress V9668 to meet me for coffee, but this feeling was a shameful product of my own vanity and/or  fitting skills envy which in no way reflects the graciousness of Carol or the majority of the wardrobe needs of my holiday . You may notice that I did not take a photograph of myself with Carol, being well aware that I would suffer badly from sartorial comparison in such a photo (or maybe we were talking too much to stop to take a photograh). ;)
The shirt was very easy to wash and wear. If only I had more of this awesome seersucker in a different colourway, I would make several!

Gratuitous scenic shot from the same walk as the first location shot.