WIP: Burda #101 02/2011

(Totally random fact: THE CO-AUTHOR of Sewing for Boys, the book that houses the pattern for my Short Sleeve Raglans?  She found my project picture through Flikr, came here to the blog, and left a suggestion in the comments for eliminating the gathers in my next shirt.  THAT'S why the online sewing community is awesome.)

An amazing thing happened Sunday when we dropped the boys off to spend time with their Indiana family.  Eliza suddenly became the most high-maintenance 14-month-old baby in history.

Fortunately she still naps for a couple of hours a day, so I was able to be productive and box up/give away all things maternity and baby.  That's right -- we're a household free of tiny baby stuff.

It's okay.  Really, it is.

There is one good thing about being UNpregnant and UNnursing: handmade, unmodified dresses.

Before I get to the Macaron, I'm in the process of making a dress for Amanda.  It was inspired by this number she found on the Internet.

source
(her new lovely blog home is here: http://twoellie.com/)

We hunted everywhere for a pattern, and finally landed on Burda #101 02/2011.  I've never used a Burda pattern, but like most European magazine patterns, it doesn't include seam allowance.  There aren't any illustrations with the instructions either.  I'm extremely dependent on visuals, so Amanda may end up with a dress with no armholes.  Or three boobs.

So far here's what I've got.  This is the muslin, and I cannot for the life of me figure out why there were horizontal wrinkles across the torso.  In theory that would mean I need to take out length, but the girl's long waisted, so I'm lost.  Otherwise the fit seemed decent.

The original pattern called for a gathered skirt, so I was up last night figuring out how to turn it into knife pleats.  Thanks to Miranda's tutorial on box pleats to get me started, by 2am I'd mastered them.  Now I've got to figure out if we bought enough fabric.  (Finding striped linen proved impossible, so we settled for bright red linen from Waechter's.)

I'm making one more muslin today during nap time.  Then tonight we'll make more adjustments if needed and then sew up the final version.