"I dreamed I was a peasant in my Burda muslin"

 

Readers, can I be real for a moment?  Sometimes I wonder what people think of the stuff that goes on here.  Those poor innocents who stumble upon Male Pattern Boldness for the very first time, perhaps while doing a random search under "SEXY SEXY SEXY" in their office cubicle, or "kathy girdle fun" --

What do they make of all this?

Occasionally I read past entries and even I am aghast.  I will say no more, we must move on.  But if you are one of those people visiting for the first time and now frantically deleting your entire search history as a result, rest assured that there is nothing strange about me.  I just happen to find myself in very strange circumstances.

What would you do if you'd been ask to sew a BurdaStyle pattern for a competition and you had to make a muslin and your identical cousin was on the other side of the planet cavorting in the company of various Bollywood B-listers?  I am confident you would look a lot like I do right now -- admittedly ridiculous.

So here's the back view.  For the muslin I used an old flowered cotton sheet.  Does my ass look fat?



Obviously I took these shots before inserting the back and front panels.

I hope you don't consider these inappropriate and it is not my intention to titillate, merely to archive my progress.  Some people actually prefer me dressed like this, but not anyone you'd want to spend the day with.

Here's a close up of the tucks.  Tucks, pleats, to be honest, I'm not sure if these are what was originally intended; I can't make any sense of the directions even in their English version, which an MPB reader so generously helped me track down.  I think they're supposed to be inverted this way....but maybe not.  Anyway they work as-is.



Here's the almost finished muslin on the bodyform with the front panels simply pinned.  You probably can't tell, but the right (as in right-left) side of the front has the wrong side of the fabric showing and there actually shouldn't even be a right and left side: I had to cut it in two parts because the cotton sheet I used to make the muslin wasn't wide enough.  That's the short version (of the story, not the muslin).

I still have to add the band collar, the cuffs, and the button loops of course.  And hem.



In case you've forgotten, this is the dress I'm making.  I am hoping the Westminster Liberty Art fabric arrives this week.

It's a little Dr. Zhivago, a little Laura Ingalls, a little Rhoda Morgenstern, and a little Yves Saint Laurent 1976 peasant collection, don't you think?

By the way -- and if you're an employee of BurdaStyle, Inc., please take note -- I love this dress and I think the final version is going to be gorgeous.  It's going to be all I can do to rip it away from my cousin Cathy.

Now then, do you see a dress like this more with Roman sandals or wedge espadrilles....?  Bare legs, right?  Big dangling earrings?  Head scarf?

I hope you all had a pleasant Sunday, my friends.  I kid you not when I say I didn't even leave the apartment.  Too much to sew.

So what do you think?

Does the tuck fold show on top of the fabric or underneath or doesn't it matter?