Wrap Style Dress with Knotted Midriff
I promise I won't regurgitate the same things I've said on Insta for every pattern review I write here. This is Burda Style 7082, an out of print wrap dress that features gathers at the bust and a shirred and knotted midriff. I bought this pattern second hand several years back and stashed it. At the time it didn't mesh with my style, but most recently I've been playing with more feminine and adult looking garments (bye bye bat printed dresses!), so this fit the bill. I had envisioned making this dress out of a gorgeous soft floral knit fabric. With all projects it's mandatory I make a muslin first, this helps me weed out any fit or design problems. Sadly, I only made it as far as the wearable muslin, photographed above. I ran into too many fit issues and lost steam with this project, but I'll endeavor to highlight the good and the bad of this pattern for future reference.
The Bad:
It's probably best to start with the things I didn't like about the pattern. For the sake of ease I'm going to bullet list them:
- The size chart is printed directly to the pattern paper and is nowhere on the envelope or instruction booklet. - This is such BS, all the other major pattern companies print it on the envelope or booklet. Imagine having to open the entire pattern in search of the size chart just to figure out what size you are and how much material you'll need. Maybe they've changed this in the last decade, one can only hope!
- There is no stretch ratio gauge. The only recommended fabric is Jersey. I find that funny because I don't have access to fancy fabric boutiques, all I have is Fabricland and Len's Mills and Jersey only shows up sporadically depending on the year and the season. A stretch gauge would help me select an appropriate alternative and allow me to determine the stretch ratio for future reference.
- There are no bust points or waist line adjustment markings on the pattern itself. Go figure, they put all that other crap on the pattern paper but not the things you wish you had.
- After sewing the gathers at the bust I found there was far too much material at the waistline seam which caused the seamline to look misshapen. The bust darts/gathers don't lay across my bust correctly, they look odd. This lead me to apply the midriff by hand and direct the gathers according to my shape and not what the pattern indicated.
- The midriff has a raw edge! Weird, I suggest hemming it to give it a professional finish, as it is knit it would inevitably roll outward.
- It features a side zipper(!?) Take inventory of your closet, how many knit garments have zipper closures? Very, very few. And when they do exist they are almost always heavier weight knits with a lower stretch ratio. I nixed the zipper and sewed the seams as I normally would on knitwear, the stretch recovery allows this top to be a pullover. Zippers are fussy at the best of times, but side zippers, plus excess fabric in the side seam, plus it being knit fabric is a recipe for disaster.
The Good:
No bullet points required for the good as there weren't many things to praise here. There is a cool trick where the extension that acts as the self facing of the front bodice neckline is sewn directly into the shoulder seam and then turned so it sits flat. I loved that. I also don't mind the idea of the garment as a whole, it's just a shame it was so damn hard to get fitting correctly.
The Alterations:
There was a short waist alteration, a shoulder slope, an armscye adjustment at the back, the neckline was taken in several inches more using a slash and close technique, and I drafted a peplum instead of using the available skirt due to lack of material. I also hand gathered and applied the midriff to the bodice by hand. The top fits but only just, there's still excess at the neckline.
After I did some research I discovered that women with longer torsos had better luck sewing this pattern from the envelope whereas those of us with short waists and typically large breasts really struggled to fit this pattern to our bodies. It must not be as easy as simply removing length, I wonder if I was supposed to decrease the pleats and gathers and change their position. I'm not so accomplished that I know how to fix these problems, but if I do return to this pattern I will try playing with the neckline shape and gathers.
Advice:
Don't install a zipper. Use flat pattern measurements to determine whether the neckline and other parts of the bodice will fit you. You can apply these measurements to the fabric and test them against your body; for example if I measured the neckline as 15" I would try to match the placement of the neckline grain on my fabric and hold that measurement across my chest, checking for stretch and fit. No cutting necessary! All we want to see is if 15" inches of fabric on grain fits or not when draped across the bust from the shoulder point to the supposed waistline seam. Make sense? It's a quick and dirty way to discover whether or not there are fit discrepancies with the negative ease. Experiment with the gathers before finalizing them, meaning you need to baste, baste and baste!
I might return to this dress pattern but I'm pretty burnt by it. Sometimes patterns are like toxic friendships, you might need distance to see them for what they are!
