Getting acquainted with La Mia Boutique

Dress (LMB 10-2010 #37 )with hood has gathered shoulder seams, elongated arms and ruched lower side seams:



Well it's Labour Weekend here where people all over the country celebrate the 40 hour working week. Parents will drool at the idea. I have had some more sewing time though so here's my weekend's effort.

Another muslin. The tricky thing about sewing in opposite seasons is that you are dying to make something but can't reasonably expect to wear it for another half year. Because my LMB is air freighted it is exactly 6 months ahead. Burda is shipped to NZ, which takes 2 months, and so by the time you actually get round to making anything you are pretty much ready to wear it.

I decided I did want to break the ice with my LMB and thought I'd give this easy knit a crack in a light polycotton knit, instead of a winter wool. I thought I might try it as a sporty summer look - a knit dress with a tee and leggings underneath and birkenstocks.

As always, there are challenges to surmount:

First of all, there was the small matter of translating the instructions. I faithfully typed them in to Google translate.


Google translate: curl your shoulders behind the front with a running stitch, petit point, to match those of the back.

Translation of the translation: gather the front shoulder with gathering stitches until it measures the same length as the back shoulder.

Google translate: sewing the two sides of the cap along the center line, press the edges together to the right and hit back on the right with two stitching needles.

Translation of the translation: Sew the two sides of the hood along the centre line, press the edges to the right and topstitch down with a twin needle on the right side of the garment.

So you get the gist. Obviously Google translate's sewing vocabulary isn't that hot, but it's actually not too hard to figure out the basic idea.

I am teaching myself sewing Italian. I can now read about a quarter of the instructions without a dictionary, so I'm confident within about 6 months I'll have it mostly sussed. (I did a year of Italian at university, so the basic grammar and structure of the language is familiar to me, it's really just a matter of picking up the specialist vocabulary)

I have to say the designs have grown on me a great deal. It's definitely a magazine aiming to appeal to the hip and cool. I'd say it's marketed at the 20 -30 year old fashion aesthetic but that's OK by me, I know how to nanna things up.

My husband gave this dress the thumbs up. "It's modern." My husband is no fashion expert, in fact sartorially speaking he's a pretty simple guy. That's why his opinion is so useful. He thinks it either looks good, or bad, and it's really that simple.

Oh and thank you for all your advice on my last dress. I'll give your suggestions a try.