Burda Top from Maxi Dress Refashion

I have had a fun day of sewing today, I got the shopping done first thing and with that out of the way I could get on with my refashion.  This is my first pattern to try out from the Burda June issue and I thought I would try it out by refashioning a thrifted maxi dress that I bought for £1 some time ago.  The dress is a size 16 so I had an idea I would be able to cut out the top pieces from further down the dress where there is more fabric.  It only just did it as I wanted to save the bottom border for the frill.

             

It has taken me quite a bit of time mainly because of the frill as I had to join the pieces together that matched, the ones you can see in the image with the little petal shapes. After a number of joins I then chose to edge the frill with a fine zig zag on a small stitch as I didn't want a turned under hem because I thought that would look too bulky.  So as you can already guess I started following the instructions then did things that I thought would work better like this hem.  One thing that did annoy me was that I could not find pieces a, b or c for this pattern on the sheet!  As it is just the frill and belt I could guess at the width and length and do my own thing but if you were new to sewing  this may  prove tricky, maybe it is just my eyesight, there is a lot on those sheets. 

One thing I did manage to salvage from the original dress was the tie belt, I just cut that in half and made the ties for the back. That was the only quick job as the rest I made from scratch, this was not your usual chop the bottom off refashion but rather chop it all up and start again.

After cutting the pieces out of baking paper I had a bit of jiggling to get the facings out of the fabric so they did not lay straight on my scrap pieces but rather at an angle, this has not affected the finish of the top though.

There was surprisingly little fabric left after I had finished probably because the top of the original dress just had spaghetti straps so not a lot of fabric at the top and then of course that deep border.

When I bought this dress for the fabric I had no idea what I would use it for but it just shows if you wait the right project will come along.

When I had trimmed these pieces down for the frill I used the in between pieces to make the binding for the arm holes.

This just gives it a bit of interest on the inside too so I am very happy with that little detail.

I am happy with the fit so now I know that the sizing for the patterns in the magazine are accurate I will be able to confidently make more items without worrying that they are poorly sized.  I never make mock ups before I sew I usually just jump straight in.

Now we just need the sun to return so that I can actually wear this, here is the original top from the magazine and it looks much warmer where she is...

As you can see I chose to make my frill much narrower than this as I felt it would look better on me.

Well week one of June and that is one project complete from the magazine, if my fabric doesn't come in the next few days I may have to hunt around the house for something else to refashion!  There is a charity shop mans shirt that I bought, not sure what to do with that??

Well bye for now and enjoy what is left of the weekend.