Last week I told you all about this dress – the pattern details, how I traced all fourteen of those curved, monster front darts, the things I omitted, the things I changed, and the things I’d want to know if I were you, sewing this for the first time.
So if you want to know all the geeky details (including the UK shop where I bought this lovely sage green marl ponti roma jersey!), then you best read that post, because this one’s going to be light on words and heavy on photos!
What I will say again is that this is a reprint of an original pattern Burda printed in 1956, but graded up to the normal Burda size range and included in the the November Burda magazine (or you can purchase it as a pdf here if you missed the magazine).
I’m stupidly happy with this dress – it’s the exact right snug, clingy, long sleeved knit sheath dress that I love to wear in winter. For the past two winters, my favourite dress has been the purple September 2010 Burda cover dress and this dress reminds me a lot of it, with a similar fit and feel.
I didn’t make any fit alterations here (sometimes I remove 1 inch above the waist), but I see I could’ve taken a small wedge out at the back to remove a few wrinkles. To be honest, I’m not really that bothered, as they tend to remove themselves as I move anyway, and in the back, I doubt anyone’s looking at the waist wrinkles anyway (ba-boom!).
Here’s a good look at those front pleats, which I chose to keep sewn closed, as darts (which I explained about here). I managed to get them to line up reasonably well across that centre front seam, apart from the very bottom pair. This required a lot of hand basting before sewing the centre front seam, but it’s important to get right since it’s the main focal point of the dress.
I think the back has some really nice details, like the back neck darts which help to give the funnel collar its nice shape, and the fish eye darts plus the curved centre back seam (which Burda think needs an invisible zip, ha!) really help to shape the waist nicely.
Sveta pointed out to me in the last post that there are so many finished versions of this dress already on the Russian Burda site! My mouth was agog at how speedy those Russian ladies are! So if you want to see what this dress looks like with the pleats open, go have a look over there, as there are quite a few finished versions already, but only mine has the pleats closed.
And just in case you weren’t convinced at how happy I am to be wearing this dress, a bit of an impromptu photoshoot dance:
Though the sunshine may have also had something to do with it…