The Late Night Sewist

As you know, I recently spent a long weekend in Germany, namely Düsseldorf and Essen.

The primary reason for such a destination was that after listening to flamenco/copla/soul/jazz singer Buika on YouTube over and over again, I realized at some point that I needed to go and listen to her live.

There were more exotic venues on the list, but as I could only get a couple of days off work and the concert in Essen was conveniently in the weekend, I chose to go and see her in Germany. It was SO worth it, her voice and the rhythm of the music just gave me chills!

As I had bought the tickets and booked the hotels, I started searching for other stuff to see and do in Düsseldorf and Essen over those few days. And I got so lucky that I just couldn´t believe it!

As it turned out there is an impressive exhibition in Essen from September to mid-January, the topic being Japanese influence on European artists in the 2nd half of the 19th and beginning of 20th century.
It is hosted by Museum Folkwang and more on this great event can be read here. If any of you has the chance, go and see it, you will be impressed and you will learn a great deal! But for me the story has an extra twist.

Maybe some of you remember the Roberto Cavalli fabric I bought in Helsinki back in February.

Remember how the beautiful wave print (which I am scared to cut into, so I haven´t made anything of this fabric yet!) is inspired or basically copied from the famous Japanese artist Hokusai?

Well… I saw the original Hokusai woodblock print and some others from his series “36 Views of Mount Fuji”!
I wish I had made something out of that fabric to wear for the exhibition, would have been fun!

But I wore a new dress, instead.

The dress is based on the pattern 4 I from the recent Burda Easy Fashion Fall/Winter 2014 issue.

As you can see, my dress looks quite different.

First of all, it is sleeveless. It was not meant to be, but it is, because may you all be warned – there is something really wrong with this pattern! Which of course is a pity because there are some really nice variations of that in the magazine. And for me it was also a real headache, as I discovered in the process of sewing what was supposed to be an easy project, that for some reason the pattern is at least 2 sizes too big! Seriously, there is no mistake in cutting the pattern, size-wise it is supposed to be correct, but it was huge instead!

I must have taken in at least 3 cm on both sides, but the result was that as the central piece was still too big, the sleeves would have been really off shoulder. As I wanted to finish the dress before the trip, I just omitted the sleeves, but still the bodice is too wide so if I forget myself and let my shoulders hang, there is some gaping in front of the dress.

The fabric choice was quite random, I just loved the blue and thought it would look better if I tuned down the sweetness with a contrasting panel.

As a result it reminds me the Star Trek movie uniforms (photo from allposters.com):

I wanted a simple jersey dress that would also allow movement since I needed something to wear for the ballroom dancing practice classes I attend nearly every Sunday. As usually I cut Burda size 38, but as I said, it looked more like size 42 on me. Apart from that, it was of course easy to sew. I omitted the side zipper and instead of the full skirt, I used a simple A-line skirt from Burda 04/2007, model 104, because it seemed to me that the full skirt would make the dress too heavy and drag on the bodice.

Some more photos of the dress:

This time my fabric shopping was modest. At first, as I was searching online for fabric stores in Düsseldorf and Essen, it looked very promising, but out of the 5 stores I tried to find in Düsseldorf some had apparently shut down and one was selling special fabrics for very exotic wardrobes – beaded organza etc, that was of no interest to me. I didn´t visit any fabric shops in Essen.

To my big surprise, one hint that I found on internet, was correct. In a big department store in Düsseldorf, called Karstadt, they have a decent fabric shop as well! At first I was sure they would only stock household fabrics, but it turned out to have a huge selection of all kind of fashion fabrics!

You can see the fabric I got in the last picture. It is a colourful snake print stretch cotton sateen. I think I saw it in Vienna in May in Komolka, as well and liked it, but at that time there were so many more appetizing bits that this one got left behind.

And last but not least, I also bought an interesting special edition of Burda magazine – Burda Vintage. You can see the models featured in the magazine here. I don´t think I will use any of the patterns, but as I can read quite a bit of German and the magazine has more text and information that just the patterns, I still got it.

As I got back from the trip, my complimentary issue of the November 2014 German BurdaStyle magazine was waiting for me in the mailbox!