Burda WOF 6-2007-109 (strapless peasant style dress)

Well I have finished the Burda WOF 6-2007-109 dress, but it doesn't look much like the original line drawing! I originally wanted to make this dress just to have something cool to wear around the house and maybe down the beach in our humid Darwin weather.

Half-way through making this I realised that the loose styling probably wasn't going to be very flattering on me, in fact I would probably end up looking like a maternity wear advert. So after a bit of thought I decided to see if I could create a little more of a waist by adding some extra rows of elastic.

Below is the end result, I don't think it looks too bad however I am wondering if I could have gone with a bit less fullness on the skirt:

Here is a closer look at the top. I was worried that with adding a few extra centimetres to the length I wouldn't have enough fabric, so I used some of the matching embroidery anglaise fabric (shown here) to add a band to the top. If you think the seam on the bust looks a little puckered you are right- the band fabric was about 1cm shorter that the dress fabric, so I eased the dress fabric in with a bit of gathering to fit the band. Not probably what I would do again as I think it looks a little strange. Also instead of attaching the skirt section at the waist I stitched it on top of the bodice panel a few inches down from the waist- just to make sure the dress was long enough :Here's a shot of the elastic on the inside, two of the rows I sewed flat onto the fabric before sewing the side seam of the bodice. the other three rows were joined to make bands and applied afterwards:

Marking out where the original two lines of elastic would go (using the embroidered patterns as a guide):
I then marked quarters on both fabric and elastic, then matched the marks up to each other and pinned:I used a triple zig-zag stitch to attach the elastic, stretching it to fit the fabric evenly between the pins (quarter marks). The end result:

Other bands were added afterwards to help keep down the boofiness factor around my midsection :)

Below is a close-up of the top edge of the skirt panel (its upside down). I tried Burda WOF's technique of folding the edge over, sewing with a fine zig-zag and trimming away the excess fabric underneath to finish this. I think it worked pretty well:

You can read my SPR review for this pattern here.