Bracken Crafts- 100 garments: 29: Burda 6722 Black dress

Well I am getting better at sewing. No doubt about it! I had a third attempt at the Burda 6722 pattern

Burda Ladies Easy Sewing Pattern 6722 Tops & Dress (Burda-6722)

and this time it has worked out: My first attempt I managed to rescue to make my
13: Red dress or long top

My second attempt I messed up again and is currently sitting in a bag of fabric waiting for me to get my courage up to have another go at it. Partly it is me not understanding what the pattern is on about but not entirely. I could not get what the instructions were saying about how to do the neck. Suddenly I got it. Well to be completely honest I woke up at about 2am and realised where I am going wrong. Talk about a moment of enlightenment!

Anyway, having ruined two good pieces of fabric in my two previous attempts, this time I started with really cheap fabric and I competely ignored the sizing chart. If I go by my measurements I need a size 12 but that was huge. I made the red dress in a 12 and then tried to take it in but it just ruined it completely so I then took it appart and recut it into a 10. Then next attempt ( I have not blogged this one yet) I cut lovely purple fabric in a size 10 and again I could not get it to look any good at all. It just did not work. I had gaping necklines and the body was just too huge. Taking it in at the sides simply does not work and I just could not make this pattern fit me. I was completely blaming myself and my inexperience.

Then I read two articles by other bloggers who had had similar problems with fit when using various different pattern brands. It seems every pattern company gives you directions to check your size and to go by your measurements not the size written on your RTW clothing. Fine. That makes sense and we all want to have clothing that fits us and flatters us and really the size on a label is not important. Or it really shouldn't be. Do we not all sew in order to look better and to have greater variety on designs that we have if we went to your average high street clothing store?

But it also seems the problems I am having are widespred enough for me to find two posts when I googled this problem. I suspect there are many others too but I read two and decided to continue sewing but take this on board. I am not alone. Other bloggers have the same problem. All I need to do is work out which size I am for each pattern company I use and adjust as needed. Well so far I have not attempted any adjustments but eventually I probably will. I am just getting away with the patterns as I buy them. But now I know other people also find their clothing huge if they follow their measurements on the sizing charts I feel much better. The trouble though is if you cannot trust the size charts how do you know what size to make? I really do not want to waste any more fabric and although I managed to salvage my red dress and infact it is lovely to wear I would have liked to have made what I intended first time around and have less stress and not feel so useless when it all went wrong. One thing I have also realised is this pattern must be tight fitting else it simply does not work so a size 8 it is and my fabric was cheap so if I do mess it all up again not so much to lose.

One of the blog posts I read recently was saying to measure your pattern against existing clothing that fits and this makes sense so in future that is how I am going to do it. In this case however, I have already cut a 12 and a 10 so I went down a further size and cut this little black number in an 8 and it works. It fits. I am happy with it and the sense of achievement when it looked ok was just fantastic. Fantastic is not a word I am usually particularly fond of since I think some people just over use it but believe me this time I really did feel fantastic when this dress fitted me. I am not over keen on the fabric but as I said it was cheap and I just needed to do this and not be beaten by what is described as an "Easy" pattern. So here is my finished dress: