April BrudaStyle challenge (with a bit of help from Colette!)

So this is a bit of cheat, being a hack of a shirtdress from the April issue of Burdastyle and the Colette Hawthorn.  This is make number 4 and  probably my favourite  so far for Hila's Burdastyle challenge

So what happened was I was about to start to tracing from my April Burdstyle when I finally noticed that the pattern I had chosen was a "tall" sized one.  Being only 5'4" this wasn't going to work, then it also occurred to me that the bodice and collar were almost identical to the Colette Hawthorn.  So I used the Hawthorn bodice and sleeves, just including the tie from the Burda dress and adapting the skirt to have the high/low hem of the Burda dress.

I used the Hawthorn size 8 pattern which was a really good fit.  I did raise the waistline by
1".  Looking at the photos this may not have been necessary at the front, but the back needed a touch more .... mm bit of a conundrum there.  Is that because the front is rising due to my bust, and I needed a fba?

I like to try clothes on throughout the making process to keep checking the fit and decided that the back hem dipped just too low.  Believe it or not I took about 4" off the length at the back and reshaped the curve.

As you can see the skirt is very full (and coincidentally the Hawthorn and the Burda were almost identical in shape).  I wouldn't want to hand hem it and  I chose to topstitch in a chocolate brown thread.  Fitting the sleeves was a bit of a challenge.  Looking at some reviews the sleeves looked a bit puffy, so I took around 2/8" off the sleevehead height.  Having narrow shoulder I also needed to reduce the shoulder width by 3/8".  Despite all this the sleeveheads seemed large and they were hard to ease without gathers.

While I like the look of the Hawthorn collar, I think it is a difficult one to fit and you can see below it is standing up a bit.  I takes a lot of notching to get it even this flat!  I do like the centre part though.

I love the tie, it gives lots of waist definition, and it could be added to a lot of styles, I may well use this again.    Overall I do like this dress and though I probably won't make it again, it is comfy and from most angles quite flattering.  The fabric is a mocha heavy chambray, 100% cotton and a great price at only £4 a metre.  Sews well and has a bit of a linen looks about it.  As you can see from the photos though it does hold creases, sometimes when you don't want them!  It's from Fabworks and still available.

After a busy week, Dan came home and we had a lovely time at a Tom Paxton concert and then on Saturday in the garden (Rosy loved having him home too).

Vogue 8825 and McCalls 7465

So two for the price of one this week!  Vogue 8825 is a pullover wrap dress and I love it.  I cut a size 14 and raised the waist by 1".

It has a wrapped bodice and long ties which give the waist a lovely definition.  The sleeves are full bishop sleeves (made of two pieces) gathered into a cuff.   I cut 1" off the length of the sleeve and made the cuff a lot narrower by 1.5".    It's really important to get the sleeve tight at the cuff.  This did make the cuff very fiddly to sew, and am I the only one in the world this has happened to but I managed to get my finger stuck in the machine, panicked, turned the machine off, couldn't then get my finger out and ended up with a nasty cut!  Otherwise ,I enjoyed sewing it and particularly as Sian from Kittenish Behaviour had vlogged this as a sewalong.

 

  
I used stretch interfacing at the neckline, which makes it a nice snug fit and also in the cuffs.  I like the raglan sleeve and the gathers at the waist.  There are two darts in the back.

The fabric is a 4 way stretch jersey bought from the liberty man at Birmingham rag market.   It was only £6 a metre.  It is a liberty print, though I think not genuine liberty as it ran a bit in the wash, but it's still good enough.  There is a long story about how I ended up with enough for 2 dresses involving overlocking a bodice through the middle, it took about 4 metres for both.  So the second dress I made is McCalls 7465, a pullover dolman sleeved dress.

This is a pretty different dress.  It has a cowl neck.

You gather a very long side in the skirt and mount it on some powermesh and add elastic to the waist.  This does mean there is quite a bit of weight in the skirt, which may pull over time.

The sleeves are great, but you do have to keep adjusting them.   It's an interesting dress, but I wouldn't make this one again.