As you might have seen, I made the shirred dress from the May issue and I really love this dress. It has no zipper or button closures, only shirring elastic at the waist. It's a super easy dress to wear for summer.
I think this dress is so easy and enjoyable to make that it would be a great project for a beginner. The sewing is easy because there are no closures, like zips and buttons to sew. Also there are only four actual pattern pieces and no sleeves to set in. The shirring and wide skirt also take care of a lot of fitting issues.
Fitting is a real problem for beginner dressmakers. Fit is just difficult to get right but without it you are not happy with your final sewing achievement. I see thís a lot in my classes and therefore often spend extra time fitting, even with beginners. Mostly the process is too difficult to grasp for beginners and can seem overwhelming, but I still spend time doing it because I want to avoid disappointment later on.
The shirred dress from the BurdaStyle issue eliminates most fitting problems. The dress ticks all the right boxes for a great beginner project. Well, until you read the BurdaStyle instructions. Unfortunately, BurdaStyle instructions are still only fit for the initiated. I think with their picture sew-along instructions for one or two projects each issue, BurdaStyle has done well to make sewing their magazine patterns more accessible to beginners.
 |
| Illustrated instructions from the May 2014 issue |
But the instructions that have NO illustrations or photos are still cryptic to most beginners - and often even to more experienced sewers. I generally have no idea what they are on about and just ignore the instructions, making up my own as a I go along.
Since I really, really like the dress I have already made another one and documented my sewing along the way, so that even beginners can attempt to sew this easy pattern. It's not really a sew-long, more a tutorial or guide of sorts. I hope it will be useful to some and might help in deciphering BurdaStyle patterns in the future.
What do you think? Sound good?
I'll start with the first post in the first week of August when I'm back from my holidays. We'll gather some supplies and look at how to find and trace the Burda pattern from the magazine. If you want to sew along but don't have the magazine, don't worry, the pattern can be bought as a digital download from BurdaStyle's US site in English here and from their German site in German here.