Burda sun dress April 108/4/ 2022 and matching quilted cotton jacket, 120/2/2021

Not the most flattering photo in Italy by my husband, showing I should wear the dress lower on the waist, but otherwise it turned out well. I think the placement of the casings as marked doesn't take my short waist into consideration. Lesson learned.

Also I used a very soft fabric which delivers a less crisp effect than the cotton used by Burda which gives a nicer result with the pleats around the neck, but the dress was almost weightless to wear in the midday Italian heat. 

I'm especially proud that the dress and its matching jacket were both squeezed out of 3 metres of double gauze cotton purchased for practically nothing from Coupons de St. Pierre online. 

One of the dirty fixes as I ran out of fabric was to use elastic for the interior of the two dress ties that finish at both hips and only use the main fabric for the ties outside the casings.

 

I made two alterations to the jacket—I added pockets using bits of the IKEA cotton that I dyed pink years ago for a T&T Burda shirt pattern and second, I lengthened the sleeves to eliminate the knit wristbands. I just dislike knit wristbands or any bomber jacket references.

The patchwork lining for the jacket will look familiar to anyone following this blog. Some of the pink silk came from the wedding kimono I sewed some years ago, other remnants were from the slew of three pink dresses I made last year.

 I tried using a binding foot to make the finishing job easier, but the quilting padding got stuck and I wasn't willing to hot-press the seam margins flat, so in the end, only hand finishing the second edge of the binding gave me the quality finish I wanted.

I covered three large snaps with the pink gauze fabric but the fabric is just too thick for the snaps to 'take.' I may come back to this if I'm convinced the jacket needs closures but on a summer evening, I can do without.