Burda 03/2015 #118: Piped Dress

I have made a few things that I haven't blogged about over the last couple of years. Now my blog is catching up with my sewing. This dress is one of them. I started making this dress in mid 2015 and finished it  at the end of 2015. Yep... that's a more than a year ago.

So I here present the Piped Seamed Dress from Burda 03/2015 #118. I initially wanted to use this project for the Burda's Ultimate Member Model Challenge in April 2015. But the lazy me did not finish it in time. Then came winter, so I put it aside for six months. I decided to finish it in summer late last year.... It could be a long story but finally I am putting it up.

I used only 1.5 meters of light-weight floral drill (120cm wide) for this project.

It felt like a breeze to wear this dress out for a coffee with friends on a sunny warm day.

I also want to mention that I went to some wood working class this year and make a stool. It's perfect for sitting at my cutting table which is higher than a normal table so it doesn't hurt my back. 

We adopted a cat in March this year. Cloud has brought us so much joy. I love to feature him in my photos, although he is not friendly toward photo shooting :)

A gathered dress: by Cotton Friend

As you may have noticed, I haven't blogged much the last couple years. I have been sewing though, on and off. Now, in the 10th month of 2016, I finally got my sew-jo and blog-jo back! And it's all thanks to this dress.

My friend just came back from Taiwan and brought me two new Cotton Friend magazines. It's a Chinese sewing magazine that has been translated from the original Japanese version. There are lots of fabulous bags, aprons, and casual clothing patterns. The clothing is of a very Japanese style - simple, loose, baggy.

Cotton Friend sewing magazine

As gratitude, I let her choose a dress to make for her. And she did:

model 1 from the magazine

Model 2 from the magazine

The fabric
The fabric is printed Japanese lawn. My friend chose this pattern. It's $12 (Australian) per metre. I'm sure it'd be much cheaper in Japan (oh yeah, forgot to mentioned I went to Japan twice last two years. Maybe I'll blog about the fabric shopping there). The lawn is soft and smooth, perfect for this dress. It needs 2.6 metres of fabric.

The dress
The dress has a gathered neckline, waistline and puffy sleeves. It only has three pattern pieces. The only not-so-easy part of the dress is making the casing for the elastic band, but it's good practice for me and I think I will be faster with elastic next time.

I made size M. No adjustment is needed. The dress fits her perfectly.

The pattern is very easy. 

I made this dress with her. It took me five hours in total from tracing the pattern to finish. It's a long time for a simple project like this but it's because I hadn't sewn a dress in a long time.

I like the gathered raglan sleeves. 

Both she and I are happy with the result. It looks exactly the same as the one in the magazine. I particularly like the puffy sleeves matching the puffiness in the bodice.

Looks just like the one on the magazine.