Burda 6-2009-120 Women’s Shorts – Entry 2-Working the Plan: Tracing the Pattern and Cutting the Fabric

So let’s get started.

I measured the waist and the hips to determine which size to make.  The waist on this particular design has tabs that are cinched in using a buckle so exact fitting of the waist is not necessary.  The hips are fairly roomy too with the addition of the front pleat.  We used the measuring guidelines to determine that we’ll be making size 36.

For the record, View A and View B are the same.  This particular annoyance happens on occasion with this magazine…sometimes the View’s don’t really have anything different about them other than the fact the pattern is shown made up twice in the magazine.  It isn’t exactly on par with those elementary picture games where you have to decide what is different in two different pictures.  Instead it is a trick, in this case the difference is just the fabric.  Not exactly what American sewers are used to! Arggg!  I think we are actually looking to see if View A has top stitching, or View B has a different pocket…or something design oriented like that.

Ale (pronounced ‘Alley’ and is our shortened nickname for our charge) chose a piece of fabric from my hoard (I stopped calling it stash…it’s really a hoard of fabric I have.  A stash is something to work from, constantly being used and renewed.  A hoard is just a stockpile that keeps getting added on to and therefore keeps getting bigger and bigger!  Ha ha…). Anyhoo, I’ve digressed I know,…from the hoard she’s chosen this really pretty stripe.  Mom, I think you might recognize this.  My recollection is that Mom gave this to me about 10 years ago along with a bunch of other stale fabrics from her stash.  The girl loves it, it’s free, and there is plenty to use…and that my friends is all that matters!

From this fabric Ale has cut the fronts, the backs, the waist facings and pieces labeled A,B,C,D (which aren’t really pieces, just an explanation to cut a piece of fabric a certain dimension).

It wasn’t until Ale had sewn the tabs and I had gone to the store to look for a buckle that I realized I fell for, once again, another Burda annoyance.  This time it was my ignorance at taking the written dimensions for pieces A,B,C,and D literally, with seam allowances part of the dimension.  NOT SO!

Here I was looking for a 1″ bar buckle (like the directions say) when the tab I was holding clearly wasn’t 1″ wide.  Why did it look to me like I should be getting a 3/4″ bar buckle instead?  What was wrong here?  In either case the store did not have a 1″ or a 3/4″ buckle so I opted to get D rings.  I decided to get the 3/4″ size and go with it.  I guess I’d figure out what we did wrong later.  So just so you know.  When cutting the pieces A,B,C, and D you’ll need to add a seam allowance onto these dimensions.  Annoying…but if you want it the way it is in the picture that is what you’ll have to do. 🙂

Back to the D rings though.  Because I purchased D rings instead of a buckle I am also going to have to change the Front tab to the Back and the Back to the Front because one is shorter than the other and the D ring requires a reverse pull to tighten up the waist instead of a straight through pull as in a buckle.  Does that make sense?  Still with me?  And too…I’m most likely just going to eliminate the belt loop as it is not going to work in the front because the Back tab is fairly short and is now being used as the Front tab.

So there you have it.  The long tab story.

Ale did a great job attaching the tabs and the D rings as well as making the front pleats and the back darts.  All firsts for her and she did a great job!  BTW I did try explaining the tab reversal to her but being a newbie it didn’t make sense until it was sewn up…something we can say about a lot of our sewing, no?

Next step is the fly front zipper.