Non white dress, multi-textured white dress Burda Style 11-2010-117

It must have been something about making a plain white blouse, but when I was finally able to sew again (sorry for the blogging and blog reading/commenting absence), the next thing I found myself constructing was outrageously bright.



This was actually a welcome distraction from a long overdue tidying of my sewing room. Hidden artfully in the depths of the fabric-I-will-sew-very-soon pile was a partially cut out frock, which daughter -the-first had started about 12 months previously (it is a very ambitious pile).
The pattern was Burda Style 11-2010-117, which my younger daughter had made herself previously.



 My older daughter had altered the bodice to fit herself and to make a sweetheart neckline, but after this considerable effort, had run out of time.



I finished it off with a pleated skirt (so much more flattering than gathers) and a batiste bodice lining, and it has proved a cool, comfortable summer dress for the spoilt recipient (who has now left a black and white partially sewn dress draped over the chair in my sewing room and returns to University next week......)

The fabric was purchased by my daughter at Spotlight in 2012, is printed dramatically and hopefully deliberately off grain, and appears to be a very poor quality cotton, but we like it anyway.


Thinking that this Spotlight fabric dress was likely to turn into a rag in a few weeks due to fabric quality issues, and having the white blouse of boredom festering in my brain, the next dress was white with some textural interest. I made this to distract myself from a pile of mending and a plaintive request from my husband to make him a new shirt for work.

Making this dress was like eating icecream, pure enjoyment. It may also have been a slightly guilty pleasure, which unfortunately, is also rather like eating icecream.



Although this is clearly a derivative of the Burda pattern above, I didn't actually use a pattern. The bodice fabric is fine cotton shirred in bands (Pitt Trading, December 2013), and is very  stretchy. I draped this in a single piece over my daughter instead of attempting princess line shaping and seaming. I made the straps wider and tapered a scoop neck towards these straps at the front. To stabilize the stretchy bodice, without losing its move-with-the-wearer properties, I faced the top edge (can't call this a neckline when it is rather from the neck) with cotton batiste but did not line the remainder of the bodice.
For some stability at the waist and to support the skirt, I used a closely woven herringbone cotton twill (about 2009, Michael's Fabrics) as a wide waistline and self facing, again draped on my daughter as a single piece. I left this quite loose to make the dress cool to wear.



 The frock is finished off with another pleated skirt, this one being 4 widths of a beautiful cotton voile embellished with bias strip swirls. (fabric.com August 2013).


 I made a rolled hem by machine, and the dress is fastened at the back with an invisible zipper.



Naturally such a swirly skirt needs a fluffy petticoat, so I made a 3 layer short ruffle petticoat from imperial batiste. It was a most satisfying day of sewing.

It is quite difficult to photograph an all white outfit, but doesn't it look like an icecream dress?

BurdaStyle 11-2010-117 dress. My failure as a sewing teacher.

We get great value from Burda at our house. There is generally a small squabble about who gets to read it first (I pull rank here). Generally my daughters pick out half a dozen patterns I should make for them.
This issue, 11-2010, arrived in December, at the start of Summer school holidays, and my younger daughter was very taken with the dress on the cover.

When she asked me to make it for her, I slyly said I would help her to make it. (It had taken me a full year to recover from helping her to make a pair of pyjama shorts). She agreed to this, and picked out her fabric, and that was as far as we got for a whole month.
Fortunately, clothes acquisitiveness was on my side. My daughter is visiting her grandmother for a few days, in Brisbane, and wanted something new and pretty to wear. I only had to put my foot down very gently for day one of the sewing. She traced, cut out, and sewed the bodice, lining, straps. She did a really good job, and seemed to enjoy it once she started. I was patting myself on the back a bit until day 2.
With only the skirt, zip and hem to go, she felt I should finish it off for her. I talked her out of most of this, but put in the zip for her I also did her unpicking when needed - anything for a sewing convert! She is very pleased with her dress, but at the dinner table reported to her grandmother and father that I had "forced" her to make the dress. This was not quite the result for which I was hoping.




The dress was a good project for a beginner.
1. She wanted it
2. She loved the fabric
3. There were only 3 pieces to trace out (we left out the pockets)
4. Although this is a 2 dot pattern, there is nothing hard about it - one set of darts, 14 straight seams, only one over gathering, one curved seam and a zipper.
5. Fitting was minimal due to the design of the dress and my daughter's shape - no shoulders, no sleeves, no fitting below the waist. (I took in the back bodice by about 5 cm whilst putting in the zip, otherwise she is a straight petite 34 - We did not raise the neckline, but as she is petite, no Burda cleavage problem for this dress)






I feel that now she can sew, she might take it up in her 30's. I don't anticipate any competition from this direction for my sewing machine just yet. :(.

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Thank you to all the people who expressed concern about the flooding in Queensland. I do not live in one of the badly affected areas. You may have seen from my photographs that it has been raining a lot since before Christmas - every day. The flooding in our area is moderate - the bridge in the centre of town has been cut 5 times, which normally means no school, my children are a bit disappointed that it couldn't wait until term time (usually it is cut once a year or so). The highway to Brisbane has been cut off by floodwaters twice, but only for a few hours each time. The road we live on has been flooded at one end, which last happened 11 years ago. I am glad that we live on top of a very steep hill. I would like to send some rain to Carolyn in Perth, as we have enough! (Sewing is a good hobby for this sort of weather - the cyclist and the cricketer in the family are getting rather antsy)