[UPDATE #2: Yikes, Für Sie has totally redone their website since I posted this over the weekend, and now I can’t find any of their sewing or knitting instructions anymore! I’ll keep hunting and post a new URL if I find them. Sorry!]
Well, seeing as how I’ve made zero progress on Burda 8.2009.128, I may as well just blather on about other sewing-related stuff to you, right?
I just discovered a couple more new cute freebie patterns for some easy, drapey garments for summer. They are this darling little drawstring tank dress, a knockoff of a current season Tim Hamilton dress:
And a drapey wrap overblouse and tank combo, a knockoff of a current season Maurizio Pecararo outfit:
And now for the catches. Yes, once again the instructions are in German, put out by the magazine “Für Sie.” Hey it’s not my fault that German women’s magazines make an effort to give you lovely designer knockoff DIY projects and English language magazines don’t! But really, the patterns themselves look so simple (one or two pieces per garment!) and there are some illustrations to the instructions, so you can handle it, right? Oh yeah, and you have the scale the patterns up as well because they’re not full size.
Hey, don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger. And wouldn’t you rather I share my freebie findings with you than keep them to myself? :D
The patterns and instructions (as well as instructions for a couple of other projects) are here in this pdf. Good luck! I’m off to go do some sewing.
UPDATE: Okay, because Meredith P. asked, and Meredith P is a lovely faithful reader, I’ll help you out a little bit, even though helping goes against everything I believe in. The scale is a one square to 1 cm (apparently you can get pattern paper with a 1cm grid, though I’m not sure how readily available this would be in an American sewing store?)
For the Hamilton dress, you need 1.6 meters of ribbed silk (faille perhaps?), two large silver beads and two small silver beads, or two silver-toned “endpieces” for cording (basically something to put at the end of the drawstrings.) They suggest adding 2cm seam allowance and 5cm hem allowance. For the arm openings, you need 4 bias strips of 55 cm each, and for the neck opening you need 4 bias strips of 70 cm in length. For the four drawstring pieces, you need 3 x 60 cm bias strips.
For the Pecoraro ensemble you need .85 meters of light blue crepe de chine, and 1.2 meters of green crepe de chine for the overblouse, and two hooks and eyes. Same 1 square = 1 cm ratio. Seam allowances are 2 cm everywhere except on the arm and neck opening, which is 1 cm. For the tank, you need 2 bias strips of 4 x 50 cm, and 1 bias strip of 4 x 70cm. For the wrap blouse you need 2 bias strips of 4 x 55 cm and one bias strip of 4 x 30 cm.
24 comments
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March 27, 2010 at 3:29 pm
Meredith P
Oh, sure, I’ll take the bait. A tiny little hint on the scale of the the graph paper or whatever to get us started? Please? Like the large, bold boxes = x cm.
Thank you! I’m enrolling in German language studies soon, I can tell.
March 27, 2010 at 3:46 pm
selfishseamstress
:D I added some tips to the text- hope it helps!
March 29, 2010 at 1:01 pm
Meredith P
There you go again, hinting that there’s a big, warm heart, where there should be a lump of coal…or something. Thank you! You’re a (stylish) doll!
March 29, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Meredith P
And I suspect we can find metric “graph paper” to print out on the internets. Yuck, but functional.
March 27, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Trudy callan
Thanks so much for wishing me a happy birthday. I am ashamed to say that I wore sweats and a t-shirt and just hung around the house with the family. A disgrace. I know.
March 27, 2010 at 3:46 pm
selfishseamstress
Sounds like a great birthday outfit to me :)
March 27, 2010 at 7:20 pm
violet
You gotta be careful when being photographed in that Hamilton dress. It could easily look like you were caught scratching your bum.
March 27, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Angela
You’re so good at finding these free patterns! Thanks!
March 28, 2010 at 1:35 pm
Sue
Thanks for the link – if you go to thier main website, where do you find the free downloads? My schpreken is not so good in Deusch…
March 28, 2010 at 9:23 pm
arnysews
Still more new pattern freebies at http://www.burdastyle.de/schnittmuster/easyfashion/ from the S/S 2010 Easy Fashion issue.
I especially like No.8 dress on page 1 but it would have to be a tunic top for me. My 47 year old knees are not fit for human consumption!
March 29, 2010 at 8:47 am
Erica
I was at a Barnes and Nobles yesterday flipping through their tiny bit of sewing related magazines when I came across a BurdaStyle ad. It has a bunch of tiny pictures of Burda members and my husband pointed to your’s and said, “Hey, the Selfish Seamstress!” You’re becoming a little celebrity.
March 29, 2010 at 10:10 am
Amy
With all these fabulous foreign-language free patterns, you really should link to some patterns from manequim, don’t you think? (I don’t know either German or Portuguese, so I’m lost on both sites. But I think I’ll be printing off some patterns anyway, and using google translator to try to figure out how to sew some of them :)
March 29, 2010 at 10:19 am
Amy
Oh — never mind. I see that you linked to Manequim (and others, cool!) in December.
March 29, 2010 at 10:46 am
Jenny
I use google chrome as my browser and when I go to foreign language websites, it asks if I want it translated (which yes of course I do!) So just a little hint to help everybody navigate through the Deutsch!
March 29, 2010 at 1:02 pm
Alice
I don’t know if you know this already, but the free patterns on the Burda site are not the same on the french part than on the german one. Some of the french ones are quite simple (and not that useful), but you could find some interesting stuff nonetheless !
March 29, 2010 at 1:34 pm
lin3arossa
SS, the pdf. file doesn’t seem to be available anymore :( Would you share by making it available as download? Please?
March 29, 2010 at 1:46 pm
selfishseamstress
Egad! They’ve completely redone the website in the day and a half since I posted about this! I don’t see the sewing instructions anymore, nor any of their great knitting patterns either :( I’ll keep hunting and I’ll let you know if I find them.
March 30, 2010 at 2:13 pm
lin3arossa
So nice of you. I’ll be hunting too. I was hoping to have in cache memory but it ain’t working. The first to find tells the other?
August 2, 2010 at 3:33 pm
lin3arossa
Für Sie has got some knitting stuff back up. Not the ones you pointed out, though… :(
http://www.fuersie.de/schlagworte/stricken0db2?page=1&%2524Version=1&%2524Path=%252F
March 29, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Meredith P
http://www.printfreegraphpaper.com/
Can print/download metric graph paper here. Oh, how I wish the US had gone metric in the 70’s when we had the chance! Why. why, why weren’t we forced? It would be like medicine: yucky in the beginning, but it would make us better in the long run :-)
It’s funny though, quilting is all in imperial measurements. Machine embroidery is in centimeters (I gave up and changed my unit of measure on my laptop).
March 29, 2010 at 3:13 pm
Monica Smith
Things that drape or have bits hanging down are great to wear for weddings funeral, dinner and special meetings or your sewing guild. At work ,drapes and dangling bit get caught in unimaginable places. I once saw a very large busted, well overall large woman, catch something from her wrap dress in a drafting table and the whole dress cascade down her arms. The room was in uproar. She was remembered.
March 30, 2010 at 8:29 am
amber
Look at you being all selfish and stuff. I swear! ;)
March 30, 2010 at 8:54 am
Laura Georgina
Beautiful tank! I need to check out the link and make one because I love floaty things that let you hide biting dogs inside (though I guess I’d need a biting dog first, hmmmm…)
And don’t worry, I won’t think you less selfish for the sharing :-)
March 19, 2013 at 4:34 pm
2-in-1 Akris-style Turtleneck | Lin3arossa
[…] they redesigned their website, after which all knitting patterns disappeared, including those the Selfish Seamstress had linked to. Subsequently released knitting pattern are still available here though, but I would […]