Spring Vogues!

I've been stalking the Vogue website waiting anxiously for these. The posing for this set of designs is a little weird and kind of obscures the clothing in certain pictures. Is Vogue consulting with Burda now?!

V1280 - Donna Karen

Very interesting neckline and seaming details that are hard to see in this black. Donna Karen always knows how to dress the female body flatteringly.

V1281 - Donna Karen

This is another fitted Donna Karen dress with interesting neckline and draping details. The colorblocking isn't my favorite and makes the front neckline look strange to my eye. I'll probably make it in a solid color.

V1285 - Tracy Reese

What a cute little wrap dress with fun notched collar, inverted darts and sleeve bands. The description says there's a lining which must be something like a slip. 

V1286 - Tracy Reese

I love the fitted shape of this dress and all the banding. The back neckline is just gorgeous. However, that is a whole lot of boobage in the front. Which I do not have a problem with on other people, but on me, well, let's just say it won't look the same. Perhaps I can figure out a way to alter the front neckline to cover the girls a little more and allow me to wear a push up. 

V1287 - DKNY

I just adore all the pleating on this design and the fact that it's a pull-over dress. With pockets. The design is lost in that busy print they used, though, so I included the line drawing so you can see what's happening.

V1296 - Bellville Sassoon

Can I just have the whole outfit, please? WHAT a neckline! Wow!

What do you think? Anyone else excited by these new offerings?

I do have some FO to blog about if I can get moving on actually photographing them.

February Burda picks

This month's magazine has some truly awesome dresses among the offerings so I had to purchase another single issue.

Up first is tunic 108 A. It's a typical Burda design that I've seen before, but the thing that caught my eye was that little inset of contrasting fabric at the sleeve hem. It looks particularly pretty done in a shiny silk charmeuse as well.

Dress 110A I wasn't sold on until I saw it in person. It is so on trend with all the color-blocking you see these days. Plus I adore how they used the same hue for the top and the same for the bottom, but one side is shiny and the other is matte. Fabulous! I am thinking of doing it in hot pink and red or maybe red and orange.

Dress 111 is the reason I bought the magazine this month. It is a modern take on a traditional Asian style and I especially loved the black with yellow bands they made it up in. Love the neckline. Love the hemline. Love the little cap sleeves. Did I mention how much I love this dress?!

Dress 117B is another awesome design totally in line with the color-blocking trend and the neon color trend. Check out those design lines! Check out that back exposed zipper that goes from the neckline to the hemline. The only thing that gives me pause is that this dress is made for stretch jersey, and I am imagining some problems with getting the zipper to behave in such a stretchy fabric. It might need to be a doubleknit instead. Oh, and I'm not sure the seam across the left bust is going to be all that flattering. But it's an awesome dress non the less.

 Some of the little girl dresses from this issue are nice and I can see the maternity designs being very popular too. I liked the colorblocked jacket 122 but it has no shape to it and I'm not a lover of boxy jackets. I thought skirt 123B was going to be really cute but it turned out to be just a square with belt loops.

How about you - did I miss any of your absolute favorites?

Oliver + S Sailboat Pants

This is my first try at the Oliver + S pattern line. I actually own 7 of their patterns but haven't been able to use them thus far since the size ranges start at 6-12 months. Rachel is 16 months old, but still wears 3-6 month clothing and 0-3 month skirts/shorts/leggings. She is a tiny little thing.

I made the smallest size and took out 1/2" per leg, resulting in a 2" narrowing of the all over width. They are still really baggy.

Her legs are tiny little toothpicks and these are swimming on her. The backside is really baggy as well:

I know she's just a baby and nobody else will care about the sizing issues, but I care. I made these to fit her body and they don't.

Anyway, it's a nice design and the pattern is drafted perfectly, but it's too big for now. I thought at first I might try to tweak it to get a better fit, but that seems like a lot of work for a pair of baby pants. I may use the front "pocket" piece with another pants pattern that goes down to newborn size and create my own frankenpattern.

I am going to try the sailboat top from this pattern next. Look for that in the next few days.

10-2008-131 - Black & white silk cropped jacket w/ leather details

I've loved this jacket since the issue came out over 3 years ago. You may remember I attempted it before, but chose the wrong fabric. This time around I used a very nice silk suiting from Fabricmartfabrics.com in a smaller scale geometric print.

Now you can see the details of the design. I love the separate collar and lapels and the fact that the collar has a collar stand which makes is stand up crisply. I used black leather for the underarm piping and back triangles since I had it on hand and find it takes to ironing really well. This pattern includes some tabs and buckles on the back sides - which I made as well - but later removed because they were too much.

I wanted my sleeves to look like the example and had to trim 2 inches from their bottoms before sewing the cuff in place. These look a little wrinkled but I have since gone back and starched them. This pattern calls for only the hems of the cuffs to be interfaced which I tried but didn't like. The bottoms were nice and crisp but the tops would collapse when I bent my arm. So I completely left off the interfacing but, if I had it to do over again, I would interface the whole cuff.

Haha - here I am mimicking the magazine pose: 

Raglan sleeves aren't my favorite because they make me look really broad-shouldered. I did put in raglan shoulder pads but later removed them to avoid the football player silhouette. There was quite a bit of top-stitching on this jacket which is always fun for me. You can see the welt pocket opening in this picture. It is a very small pocket and might hold a lipstick.

The back has a small vent detail with leather triangles securing the top and bottom.

Here is a nice close-up of the collar area:

Shoulder close-up:

The full lining was done in Ambiance:

Now, I made a straight size 38 because that is what I had traced from the first attempt. This is a VERY loose fitting jacket. I think they have it pulled back on their example picture because mine is so much looser then their jackets normally fit me. Here is their example:

This is the first time I have experienced garment manipulation from Burda and hopefully it is just a fluke. I was more then a little unhappy with the largeness of this jacket. Of course I could have done a muslin, so I've nobody to blame but myself for being lazy. It's growing one me - and I do like it - but it's not what I had in my mind's eye.

I'll be making a few things for Rachel next from an Oliver + S pattern. Also, the February issue of Burda is another good one that I just placed an order for. Perhaps I should just renew since they have gotten so good lately...

Vogue Patterns magazine torments me + a fun indulgence

Last week I received 2 fun things in the mail on the same day and squealed with joy. The first was my copy of Vogue Patterns magazine February/March issue. I love this magazine. They have awesome articles, new sewing techniques that are explained through pictures, input from other sewing bloggers, etc. It's also relatively inexpensive and that makes me happy too. However, check out page 90 from this new issue:

Does this fabric look familiar to anyone? It is none other then my favorite silk charmeuse of all time that I sadly turned into a wadder as seen here. Thanks alot Vogue!!! If only you had published this picture last spring, I would have made that exact dress up and totally loved it. I still might salvage the skirt portion for a simple bias skirt this spring.

The other fun thing I got in my mailbox was a zipper color card from Zipperstop.com. I have ordered zippers from them in the past but have always guessed on the color I wanted based on my computer screen. I have ended up with some colors that didn't match what I bought them for. SO, even though it was definitely a splurge ($34.95 + very pricey shipping) I bought it anyway in order to get the exact colors I want.

There are over 500 colors to choose from, although most of their zippers come in certain stock colors and you can't get the other colors unless you order 50+ zippers of that one color. But I have found that I can find one of the stock colors that matches the fabrics I have.

Get your own here or look for it on Ebay and pay slightly lower shipping.