I’ve been waffling on what to work on next, tracing out the odd pattern and then deciding I don’t really want to work on it right now. Last night, I think I finally settled on something, the Burda 114 blouse from 4/2007, the second issue of Burda I ever bought. The photo from the magazine is kind of bad in a 1995 way:
But I think the line drawing is great- it would be a nice fun blouse for under a cardigan or jacket for work:
And I’ve got some dark brown stretch poplin with white woven pinstripes and a nice sheen in my stash that would be great for it:
This is no mere blouse, however. This is a blouse that defeated me the first time I tried to make it. It was one of the first real sewing projects I ever attempted, perhaps a month or two into my garment sewing hobby and I ended up abandoning it pretty quickly. At the time, the concept of a muslin was foreign to me, and after grading it down to a size 32 and cutting it out of white shirting, it became clear that the blouse was going to be a bra-displaying failure. A whole lot of things seemed like they were going to go wrong with this blouse. And judging from Cidell’s experience, it seems like they would have gone wrong had I proceeded. (Cidell, as far as I can tell, you are the only other person in the world who has ever attempted this blouse!)
Last night I looked over it again and tried to figure out what I would need to change so that the neckline wasn’t hanging halfway down my torso. Petite adjustment above the bustline? SBA? And then it occurred to me, DUH, MAKE THE NECKLINE HIGHER. It’s funny- I’m so used to cutting chunks and slicing slivers OUT of patterns to make them fit, it never occurs to me to actually add more paper to them. I plan on making a couple more adjustments as well based on Cidell’s experience and what I can remember from my first attempt of almost 3 years ago.
This is going to be a first for me – actually revisiting a pattern that failed badly enough that I didn’t finish it, didn’t fiddle with it and make hacks until it was wearable. Usually if something looks like it’s going to flop completely, I decide that the pattern just isn’t for me. But I think I might be able to make this one work this time. Maybe.
How about you? Have you ever revisited a failure pattern to make it work? What did you do differently and how did it go?
The Selfish Seamstress 
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February 9, 2010 at 11:18 am
Miss Celie
Please, please, please detail the front placket and facing. I didn’t understand bumpkis.
This is my most popular blouse. But, I rarely wear it. It’s great under a low cut veneck sweater and blazers. But so stinking low cut.
February 10, 2010 at 11:16 am
Meredith P
So Cidell, how much would you raise the neckline to make it less “boobalicious”.? I think you and I have approximately the same lengthwise measurements (height)–certainly not circumference, but I hope to be knocking on that door again many pounds from now. I think your blouse looks completely gorgeous, but who wants to encourage small, hungry babies :-)
February 9, 2010 at 11:25 am
selfishseamstress
It does look fabulous on you though! But I know what you mean- my first attempt was insane. “Low cut” is an understatement. “Badly drafted” is more like it. But as for the placket, I think I am “misunderstanding” it in the same way you did. If I make it the way I think the instructions are specifying, there’s going to be a huge overlap between the left and right fronts. It’s a puzzler! If I figure it out, I’ll let you know!
February 9, 2010 at 11:27 am
Kate
I would love to know (I guess because I want encouragment) if you throw away your failures and muslins? I have a growing pile of raggedy misfits that I really ought to toss. Or is there some other fabulous use for them?
February 9, 2010 at 1:19 pm
CGCouture
I’m curious about this too, I usually hold onto mine for a while, and then after I’ve collected a few too many and need the space back I throw them away. I’m not even sure why I keep them, it’s not like I’ll ever fix them or try to wear them.
February 9, 2010 at 1:32 pm
selfishseamstress
This is a tough one for me. The failures often hang around because I lie to myself and tell myself that eventually I’ll go back and fix them. Sometimes I do, sometimes I repurpose the fabric for something else, and some of them are… still hanging around. Whether to make a muslin is always a tough decision for me because I have size and fit issues that make muslins totally worthwhile in terms of the quality of the end product. But at the same time I hate the physical waste that results. On one hand it’s nice when the muslin fits on the first try; on the other it makes me feel like, crap I could have just cut it from the fashion fabric the first time and not produced a whole additional garment that is now waste. Believe it or not, when I don’t make a muslin it’s usually not so much out of laziness so much as that I don’t like to produce things that get thrown away. And you can only have so many cleaning rags and rag pillows and crafty coin satchels and whatever.
I have a couple of ways of dealing with this now which help but are not ideal. 1) I buy used bedsheets at thrift shops and use them to try out patterns so at least I feel like nothing new is being produced so that I can make muslins. 2) I use old muslins to make new muslins. Obviously this solution doesn’t scale infinitely, but often I can cut a bodice for a muslin out of the skirt of a previous muslin. 3) I try to make wearable muslins using fabric that I have in my stash that I’m not too excited about. That’s probably what I’m going to do with this blouse. If it’s not fabric I was jonesing to use for something else it at least forces me to use what I have and I might even end up with something I like. If don’t like it, there’s a decent chance that I could give it to someone else who will like it (not so with a muslin made of muslin and marked up all over with sharpie.)
In some areas (I know this is possible in some parts of Europe but I haven’t seen it in North America) fabric made of natural fibers is collected for recycling into paper and other materials.
February 9, 2010 at 12:11 pm
Dei
Oooo. Prettiful. I am painfully empathetic to sewing failures, trudge on. Bring that neckline up and you’ll have a knock-out!
February 9, 2010 at 12:45 pm
Trudy callan
I have a couple of things I’ve started that I’ve put aside. One is actually a failure because I made it too small. I’m going to try and see if I can fix it.
I really love the blouse with the ruffles.
Thanks so much for visiting my blog, and yes, I was flirting with that camera. Wasn’t I? It was so much fun. I got such a great response to that post that I will definitely be doing more of those in the future.
February 9, 2010 at 12:46 pm
Beangirl
Failure is for the weak. I pity the fool who fails.
Oooo, I’m channeling Mr. T. That is so cool. Maybe I should get a mohawk.
Personally, I completely ignore failures. I firmly believe that ignoring something makes it not exist anymore. No, really. It does. Try it sometime. I find it works especially well on ex-boyfriends and annoying neighbors.
February 9, 2010 at 1:20 pm
selfishseamstress
This is my usual method as well and I wholly subscribe to this philosophy. I find that if I wad it up and hide it behind my stash, it never happened. Ahem, georgette blouse from Burda 8.2008 that is shaped like a potato sack.
February 9, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Kathleen Cooper
I’ve made stuff that was either too big or too small or too low cut (as in spouse asks – “is that for pole dancing?”) and I just go back to the drawing board – literally – and do some redrawing and see if I can tweak it to make it work for me. I don’t call stuff that doesn’t work “failures”, instead I call them “learning experiences”. Remind yourself that you never get to see the stuff that the designer decided didn’t work, you only see their successes
February 9, 2010 at 5:34 pm
Beangirl
see, my spouse would have said “Is that for pole dancing?” but I would have had serious concerns that he had an entirely too hopeful tone in his voice. This is also why he is not allowed to help me take my measurements.
February 9, 2010 at 6:56 pm
selfishseamstress
Hehehe- you’re braver than I am. If I made something and Dan’s first reaction was to tell me that it looked like stripper gear, my first thought would not be, “Hmm, how can I improve this?” More like, “Maybe it’s time to try something completely different.” :D I wonder how many pole dancing outfits end up in the reject pile at Marc Jacobs!
February 9, 2010 at 1:20 pm
CGCouture
The line drawing looks adorable, so I hope you get it figured out this time! :-)
February 9, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Vicki
I really like this pattern and have recently been thinking about the possibilities. Good luck. BTW, I haven’t revisited a failure, so no help or feedback there :)
February 9, 2010 at 4:04 pm
sewing elle
I LOVE this blouse. I just borrowed this Burda from my local library this weekend and keep on looking at this style and wanting to make it. I love Cidells version too. I wish I’d bought this isse when it came out. I’ve even tried to find a back issue, without success so far.
It will look great in your brown and blue stripe and we’ll all learn from what you did to solve the BWTF “instructions”
February 9, 2010 at 5:36 pm
Beangirl
I… but… I… uh…
You have rendered me speechless. Library. Lending. Burda magazines. But… but… how… do you live in heaven? Go on. You can tell us. You do, right?
February 9, 2010 at 6:58 pm
selfishseamstress
I used to do that in Germany! They even let you pull out the pattern inserts and trace the patterns! I get the feeling that if libraries in the US had them, the pattern inserts would walk off and libraries would be left with a set of thin, somewhat inferior fashion magazines.
February 10, 2010 at 4:12 pm
sewing elle
Where do I live? Adelaide, South Australia ( aka the end of the earth, perhaps it is heaven after all!). And yes you get the inserts too and can trace patterns off. If you “lose” the issue you have to buy the library another one. It doesn’t have to be the issue you “lost”….. aha, thats my answer to getting back issues…
February 9, 2010 at 6:48 pm
selfishseamstress
Sorry, some people seem to be interpreting my use of the word “failure” as “gut crushing catastrophe from which one gains and learns nothing.” Of course, what I mean is a “wadder,” that is to say, a project that ends up unwearable. Obviously, one learns from mistakes as much as, if not more than, from projects that work out as intended, as I have pointed out often. In no way do I mean to suggest that I am reveling in my own or others’ failures. I would not, however, go so far as to say that because I learn something from each project, that everything is a “success,” so i stand behind this as a legitimate use of the word “failure,” regardless of whether it’s the terminology others would use or not. I certainly am not trying to be self-pitying or “make myself feel better” through casual use of this term.
February 10, 2010 at 1:15 am
Lily
Weellll…. I usually make at least 3 muslins of everything I make and I draft all my own patterns… so I suppose you could say that everything I make is a failure! I make a pattern, make a muslin – it doesn’t fit/looks awful. So I change the pattern, make another muslin – usually some other issue. So I just keep changing the pattern until it works!
Hahaha I would never have made anything ever if I gave up because they didn’t work!
February 10, 2010 at 5:39 am
Kerry
I’ve got piles of failures. I should muslin everything, but I never used to, and typically only do now on complex projects like lined wool jackets. However, I do use recycled sheets and curtains for material. I hate the idea of wasting things like thread and material for a throw away draft. I had to purchase actual muslin for my pattern drafting class so this weekend I attempted my first blouse for my class project, and to be honest I did not like working with it because the muslin was not the weight/drape that I would need for the finished blouse, so although I could check the draft and the fit, I couldn’t really get a feel for what the finished product would look like. The project involved a ruffled neckline and ruffles around the placket, and I want soft drapey ruffles and the muslin was much more Elizabethan-poke-your-eye-out style collar.
Oh, it looked almost exactly like your proposed Burda project.
The Selfish Seamstress is channeling me. I am trying to copy a J. Crew blouse…I guess instead of reinventing the wheel over here I could just the Burda and save myself some trouble. (but then where would the challenge be?)
Right now I am working on/technically not doing a muslin of a pair of “sailor pants” (complete with working button front closure). I had to grade a size 16 pattern down to what I guess one would call an 8, and I am cutting into the good fabric – but, the fabric was on sale for $2/yard and I had planned on using it for a similar style of pants anyway. I have confidence that my grading was correct…we shall see. If it fails, I will figure out why and try again – most likely after moving on to a completely different project.
February 10, 2010 at 6:28 am
AnaJan
Milkyway (from the BurdaStyle) made the same blouse:
http://www.burdastyle.com/projects/silk-ruffle-blouse
Unfortunately, she had the same problem with the neckline, and she used the neckline ruffle to camouflage the gap.
February 10, 2010 at 6:45 am
Halls
I love that blouse and I did read Celie’s problems with it, but I think if you raise that neckline, you should be fine. Right now there is a blouse in Talbots.com that has a similar neckline, but higher. It is a very pretty neckline. Good luck!
February 10, 2010 at 8:18 am
sigrid
This is a bit off topic, but I read in a knitting book (Knitting in Plain English, I think) that contorted models usually indicate that the garment doesn’t fit. I bet that the only way the shirt in the photo stayed on was by raising her arm, so they turned it into some kind of weird “fashion” shot. I always look now for odd body language because it often indicates a poorly designed ft.I usually throw my failures away. Trying to fix a badly designed garment usually results in me hating the entire project.
I can’t see the neckline under the ruffles, but it looks square, and square necklines often gap, don’t they? maybe you could give it a slight V shape to fit over your bust better.
February 10, 2010 at 9:53 am
Arg
FYI for anyone in NYC, I have seen a textiles recycling booth sometimes at the Union Square farmer’s market…I’m not sure if they’re there every time or not, but I’ve been meaning to trot over to them with some stuff the next time I spot them. I’m really a beginner and learning quite slowly so I haven’t accumulated too much waste yet, but I can tell it’s going to be an ongoing problem….thanks for your excellent blog, by the way!
February 10, 2010 at 11:15 am
amber
Haven’t been sewing long enough to really want to doubleback on something yet, but I think that you should definitely give the blouse another go. I’m gaga for those ruffles! I’m also guessing that Dan is not going to have issues with it being super lowcut. As least, I know Jim would jump for joy. ;)
February 10, 2010 at 11:21 am
Meredith P
Oh, and I didn’t mean to hijack your blog, SS, but I’m sure you can understand: you and I are not remotely the same height, and…it’s all about me, that’s why I asked Cidell about her neckline raising estimates.
I definitely would LOVE to see this on you Elaine. I think the stripes would be stupendous, but definitely a muslin first. I’m non-munchkin and Burda’s necklines are usually landing around mid-abdomen, if left to their own devices. I think they use v. tall models, and a lot of clothes pins for their photo shoots.
February 12, 2010 at 11:18 am
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