Danielle dress - Burda

 

 

 

I have owned this pattern since about 2010. I printed it then as well. Just never got round to making this. Its the Danielle dress from Burda which used to be free. Its the first pattern I ever printed and was printed very bady on an old printer which died years ago, so was quite hard to put the pattern together since some of the pages were not printed straight.


I found a picture of the Burda original on Pinterest but cannot find it on the burdastyle.com website now.This is the link to the Pinterest picture:

https://in.pinterest.com/pin/441282463460531811/

I decided since we are in lockdown why not actually make this at last?

I cut it from a  piece of Ikea cotton fabric which I had used for a couple of previous projects. I need to stash bust and I have, to be honest, gone off this fabric but despite that the dress turned out really nice.




I lengthened the sleeves with an extra bit i  order to make a frill.  Now at this point I also added a ribbon to the inside of the sleeve where the frill joins the original sleeve in order to have a puffed sleeve but with an extra frill.







It looks so good just as it is that I actually left out the elastic and do not really need to ribbon. Though if I fancy a change at some point it will be easy to add some elastic and make puffed sleeves with a frill edge instead.

 Never mind. I like the extra long sleeves much better than the tattoo dividing shorter ones would have been. I prefer to either cover or show my tattoos and not half cover. Just a quirk of my nature.

I had some problems with the neckline. I tried understitching but it just did not quite lie flat so in the end I topstitched it dow all around the neck.

 As usual my invisibe zip is not quite invisible. The foot I use never quite gets close enough. Pobably cos its a cheap copy from China rather than a proper expensive Janome foot.

 An admission here: this is not quite a proper Danielle. I sewed it all up, overlocked to make it nice inside then realised there is another bit. Its meant to have a narrow band under the bodice - like a wasitband although ts high waisted so not on the natural waistline anyway. I missed it out.

 Well rather than take this all to bits - after all it fits and looks quite good despte the ommission, I decided to just make a belt from the border fabric which I also used for the sleeve add-on.

 I have worn this with and without the belt and like both looks so I think its going to stay as an option.


Next time I make this and I expect I will - maybe as a winter dress in velvet like the original Burda version - I will try to remember to make it with that missing waistband.

 

 For now though I am very happy to have made this dress. I do not think its quite my usual style but the printed pattern has been lurking in my loft for years waiting to be made. And for the record despite my initial dislike of being locked in I am very much enjoying lockdown despite the impact on our finances due to loss of wages etc, because I am finally getting all these lovely dresses I planned to make done. I have not had so many summer dresses since I was a girl at home with my Mum buying my clothes.

Shame we have to all go back to work. 

Bracken