The Biba Burda Dress

This dress has been sitting in the back of my wardrobe semi-forgotten for two years – without buttonholes and hem! Long time readers might even recognise these cuffs from my tutorial on attaching a shirt cuff and the associated one on continuous bound sleeve plackets – both written about two years ago.  Well I’ve finally finished the actual garment!

The pattern is #109 from Burdastyle January 2010 – hey look, she’s wearing boots and a belt too:

This dress uses a lot of fabric as both the bodice and skirt are double layered for opacity. It was a perfect opportunity to use up the 5m of plum viscose georgette that I’ve had lying around for years. The very first designer I worked for called this colour ‘Biba plum’, having worked through the era where it was synonymous with Barbara Hulanaki and her store Biba.  I feel like I need a floppy hat and false eyelashes now…

Here’s the back:

The fabric is gorgeous to wear, and being double layered it is nice and weighty and swishes glamorously around when you walk.  The bodice has pintucks either side of the button band, and I found some stash buttons that were just close enough to save a dye charge:

Mmm.. they look less red in real life. It looks like I sewed them on a bit tight though…shall I do them (all 12…) again?

The hem had also succumbed to gravity at the side seams, so that was today’s to-do project.   A while back I scored these skirt hem markers, after reading Sunni’s nifty tutorial on how to use one at A Fashionable Stitch:

Thanks Sunni, I always wondered how they worked!

I think the ruler might have been broken at one stage though, as it starts at 8″ and is a bit short. (But both are like that – is that normal??  And why??)  Anyway, if I lower my mannequin down to it’s shortest height it is tall enough to be of use.

And work it did – after cutting along the line of pins, my hem was perfectly level!

…ok, maybe not in this photo…

Yay – a new dress to wear! 

I can’t believe I go to the effort of making things and drift focus, stopping when they are 95% finished.  Am I the only one with this problem?  Perhap my resolution for Matariki should be to finish things, rather than just start them!


Happy Sewing!