Sunday 26 June 2016

False-Wrap Dress

Aka Mixed-Emotions-Dress. I quite liked the pattern photos on Burdastyle, both the black version, and the colored one. Probably because it is a wrap, even a false one.

I am quite fond of wrap dresses, blouses or whatever, but so far, never mastered them properly when sewing. All my wrap tries ended up as a disaster, I must have some real issues with fitting. To be quite honest, my main fitting issues are in the shoulder area, so improper fitting results quite easily in gaping or even bigger problems.

I sewed the Burda 127A, 03/2015 as a X-mas dress last year. Thanks to Burda succinct instructions, I needed quite some time to figure out the puzzle this dress is. My version is in some kind of shiny silk, which would be too strange for a daily wear. I interfaced it with silk organza which strongly helped to fixate certain parts of the dress.


I was however surprised by the extent of alterations I had to do and the quantity of fabric I took away which did not help to the final fit.
The silk was quite difficult to iron and some lines of the dress still seem to me uneven, but when inspecting the model pictures, it has the same "problem", so I will just assume it is fine.

Also, there is quite a lot of fabric in the front and it seems to have an uneven hem. On the other hand, I really like the line of the dress, it just goes out of my standard dress silhouette!

I did finish the dress only one hour before leaving for our x-mas dinner, but I have totally no idea what happened. I started early enough, but got probably taken by x-mas shopping and all that brouhaha. Anyway, the dress got worn again on New Year's Eve party and got photographed 5 month later.

And because I like repeating my errors I already sewed this dress again, in colors.

Thursday 9 June 2016

Sorbetto Top

I am quite aware of the fact that I am really late on discovering some quite famous patterns. My last year's obsession with Anna By Hand London is fortunately behind me, even though I might sew one again this year.

So here comes the Sorbetto top. I downloaded it a almost in the beginning of my sewing and it remained in the back of my pattern stash, untaped, uncut till the last moving. As I am currently pretty successful in reducing my fabric stash, I try to do the same with the pattern stash. So sewing patterns I own, even if I did not pay for them, is a good way to do it.



I used a white cotton popline with little blue dots which I bought last year for a top. It behaved correctly and pressed easily, which means that the top was ready very quickly. Then of course, there is nothing extremely difficult on the Sorbetto top.

I did a visible bias binding on the collar and covered biais binding on the armscyes. No hand sewing included this time, as the machine sewing is almost hidden in the seams. Again, it really sped up the process.


I did not bother with a muslin, just compared the pattern to my top basic, did the usual should adjustments and lowered the dart slightly. When sewing it, I took in almost an inch on each side to fit it better, mainly because my fabric is not flowy.

Inspiration: too many Sorbettos on the internet
Pattern: Sorbetto top
Pattern changes: shoulder tweaks, side seams fitting
Technique: biais binding
Fabric: cotton popline
Time to Complete: one DAY, yes, that's right, one DAY
Total Cost: 11 EUR