Burda Darted Blouse, in a floral extravaganza

This lovely floral blouse (105-04-2018) is the final project in my Burdastyle Academy Advanced Teacher Certification Course. It's an interesting pattern, with lots of detail -- front darts, two piece sleeve with a gathered cuff, collar and stand, and so on. 

It was an interesting make, with lots of challenging bits. Nothing really super hard, but lots of steps. I enjoyed it! I used a floral cotton from my stash, one that I've had for a really long time, and was delighted to finally find the perfect project for this fabric. Not only that, there was a very amusing typo in the selvages that entertained me -- so I had to use it as a garment label. Shout out to my fellow peons! 

This cotton behaved very nicely, taking pressing well, so that the darts and seams all lay nice and neatly. I had to shorten the sleeves quite a lot (thanks to my T Rex arms) and took 1.25" off both the upper and lower sleeve bits. Fortunately, with the cuff, that made them just the right length for me. Whew! 

I didn't shorten the body, although I could probably take a bit off the bottom length. I do like it as it is, however. I cut the inner collar stand and the interior yoke out of a tiny scale yellow gingham, also in my stash -- partly for the vibrant contrast, and partly because I didn't have quite enough of the narrow width floral to cut a second yoke anyhow ;)

I had a bit of a quandry picking buttons, but decided (with the help of many voices on Instagram) to go with this blush tone floral button from the extensive stash of shirt buttons that my sister thrifted for me a couple of years ago. I'm set for shirt buttons for a while!

My Janome is a little quirky when it comes to its automatic buttonholes -- they sew up nicely, but always slightly bigger than necessary. I get around this but testing with a button slightly smaller than the one I'm going to use, and when I get a buttonhole I like, I go ahead. I only put one button on each cuff rather than two, mainly because it's a bigger button and two would have looked squished.

I was so glad to have the extra instruction in the class to finally get the Burda bias strip sleeve opening done properly. It's just a little fiddly with attaching a bias strip to finish the slit, and then turning one side in before attaching the cuff -- makes sense once you do it, but hard to understand beforehand. 

I love how this turned out. I am really pleased with the fit and love the print. It was so great to have this push to make a more detailed project. It was really satisfying to slowly work through each step and make sure it was done and pressed well, then on to the next. And also a joy to use some of the beautiful fabric in my stash that has been hidden away on the shelves for far too long. 

That's it for my Burda classes, but I've earmarked a whole stack of Burda patterns I would love to make this year now that I'm much more comfortable with their patterns. I find they usually fit me well, and I'm planning to make a dent in my Burda magazine stash. For now I'll just swan around happily in my faux-Liberty "Europeon" blouse!