Burda Style

I have several years’ worth of Burda Magazines and they are bristling with bits of paper marking things I want to make. However, my success rate has been rather hit and miss with these patterns, and for quite a while I have had more misses than hits, especially with tops and jackets. Consequently, I lack confidence that this pattern line will give me a consistent result across several garments and to rectify this, I am hoping to make a few patterns up over the coming weeksn and months to try and sort out what my standard alterations are.
So, on Tuesday evening, I constructed a muslin for a knit top. It’s a plain, round necked, long sleeved, knit top. Nothing fancy. And the muslin fit with no alterations. I was shocked and had to ask my fitting buddy to come over and look to make sure I hadn't missed something. Later this week, I'll hopefully get round to making a proper version of it to make sure it wasn't a fluke.

On Wednesday evening, I constructed a muslin for a blouse and I thought it needed a bit of tweaking. Today my fitting buddy came round to check the fit and decreed it needed much less tweaking than I had supposed. In the end, the only thing we changed was the neckline, which was too high and had to be lowered, and the waist darts at the front, which I made a little larger because I am a smaller size in waist and hips than in the upper body. I had already done a round back alteration to the tissue prior to cutting the muslin. I was using a pattern with a short sleeve and wanted a long sleeve, so I've taken the sleeve from my McCalls pattern which I've made several times, and will use it for this shirt. I have gone straight to the good material without doing a muslin for the sleeve, so I hope my confidence doesn't turn out to be misplaced. Anyway, I've got the shirt cut out and the body constructed and the collar is attached. Tomorrow morning I will start work on the sleeves and have set myself a target of completing this shirt by Tuesday night at the latest.