Burda 12-2008 #121 Dress with Bias Bodice

Well, it's been long in the making. My sewing room has been in the 50s because of the cold weather outside. When it gets -20F outside nothing keeps my basement sanctuary warm. Right now it's -20F at the Airport and we are always 5 to 10 degrees colder than that. Brrrr. So the cold temperatures in my sewing room have kept me from spending long amounts of time in there. I can't sew with gloves on, I tried.

So, here she is . . . details follow each picture. Sorry the pictures are so big. Blogger used to change the picture size and then the picture would be the normal size when you clicked on it. Now it's not doing that anymore. Now they just show up the size that I save them. And, yes, I realize I could make them smaller but they you couldn't see the details.



Here it is with no belt. It has the same hip pleating that I liked on my LBD dress. It has a bodice cut on the bias and is fully lined. The cuffs are also cut on the bias.


With a belt (ends tucked in). I will probably wear this with the belt. I like the (new!) boots with it but probably not with the cranberry tights.


I like it with the ties out but am afraid it takes away from the hip tucks. A girl only needs so much there if you know what I mean.

Sleeves on the bias.

I think that from now on I have two alterations. Cidell talked about how she used the BWOF way of doing the alteration. I asked her about it and she directed me to the BurdaEnglish Yahoo group. I was already a member but I didn't know about all the files.

I love the fold-over flaps. They tend to flare up a bit so I'll probably invisibly stitch them down.

Isn't this dress better than this retro dress in the back? I totally need the swayback adjustment!

This was the only wonky thing I found about the dress. Well, okay, the second wonky thing I found. The inside of the bodice is lined with self-facing and lining fabric. Then you overlap the two pieces and sew that CF topstitching. How do you attach the inner lining and out fashion fabric while making everything look nice inside and out? I attached the skirt lining to the bodice lining as far as I could to the CF. The topstitching and overlap made it impossible sew it all the way across. The same goes for the outside fashion fabric. So, I have two little holes that I need to hand sew. I read BWOF directions and couldn't figure out what they did to make it look nice on the inside. Another option would be to treat the bodice lining and fashion fabric as one and sew it to the skirt portion (lining and fashion fabric) but I didn't want the seam to look like that inside.

I am excited that my seams mostly match. This glencheck is not a perfect square patter so there was really no way of matching the bodice unless I used the wrong side of the fabric and I wasn't going to do that.

Inside with lining showing. I used remnants for the lining and I didn't have enough of either color to do the whole thing. I rather like the effect though.

The "hole" created on the outside of the dress.