The first dress of spring - Burda Style 7557

I’m going on vacation next week and in an ideal world I would have started sewing a beautifully co-ordinated vacation wardrobe some months ago. But I didn’t. I really must work on my time management skills! I have, however, completed this

The pattern is this one

It's Burda Style 7557, which comes in petite sizes 18 to 25, designed for short, half size people like me! If, however, you are a regular size person, you might be interested to know that this pattern is exactly the same as Burda Style pattern no. 7774 which comes in sizes 36 to 50. Burda describe it as “a slender dress with empire waist, fitted and feminine, with a low neckline”. When they say fitted, they weren’t kidding! I made up a muslin, using my regular Burda size, and it was snug. To be fair to Burda I wouldn’t say it was technically too small I would just say that personally I prefer for a daytime dress to be a little less figure hugging. When cutting the actual fabric I just added a little to the side seams which gave me the breathing space I needed!

I made it in a stretch cotton that I purchased from Gorgeous Fabrics. The pattern doesn’t include a lining and, as the fabric has some body and I wanted this to be a casual dress, I decided not to add a lining. However if I were to make it in the kind of satin fabric that Burda have used in their photographs, then I would have lined it.

The pattern suggests quite a lot of topstitching – the neckline, armholes, the darts and the empire waist seam. I like topstitching and I decided that with this print a heavy black thread would give it a nice definite, finished edge. I didn’t, however, topstitch the darts because I came to the conclusion that when you’ve got a D cup bust it might not be a good idea to have two black lines climbing up your front pointing to the bust apex. And, to keep it streamlined, I didn’t topstitch the empire waist seam either, just the neckline and armholes – here’s a close-up

I expect you’re wondering why I used a black zipper instead of a white one and, looking at this picture, so am I. When putting the zipper in I was only thinking of the outside not the inside – I’ll think it through better next time!

Anyway, with that now done, I am making this super easy A-line skirt, pattern 104 in the February issue of Burda magazine

Oh, and something I forgot to mention before, I’m doing the Understanding Knits online course on Pattern Review. I’m really enjoying it. What a revelation - who knew that there was so much to know about knit fabrics! I’ve never been entirely happy with my construction skills when making knits so I’m hoping this course will improve that. More soon ……