Dear Burda Style back issues: stop mocking me!

"Someday you might sew me... I looked really awesome on your friends!"

Dear Burda Style 2010 back issues falling off my bookshelves and spilling into my pattern drawer,

STOP MOCKING ME. I know I don't sew as often as some of your other lady friends, but it's not that I'm afraid of tracing or anything. 

It's just that well, you showed up EVERY SINGLE MONTH that I subscribed to you and some months I can't even pull out my sewing machine, never mind dive into a sea of criss-crossing colored lines and extract a stylish colorblocked knit dress.

And sometimes I leaf through you and circle ideas for things I might make someday, but then I don't, and I think you're laughing at me.

By the time you sent me the maternity-themed-issue above, I was already in labor (for FIVE days I might add, not that that's your fault or anything). What's up with that?

To be honest I've only ever sewn one Burda Style magazine pattern and it was awesome, but the experience of altering it for maternity and deciphering the binding instructions left me a little exhausted.

Please stop pretending that somehow, someday I am going to stand on the beach with the wind in my hair and say "oh, you know... I just traced up this Burda Style pattern last night and threw it together on my serger without making any mistakes. No big."

I just can't take it anymore. I know you are awesome and economical and have cool trench coats and unusual blouse construction and smarter, better fit than the Big Four and if I was a lot cooler, I would find the time to hang out with you.

But I just don't think we belong together anymore.

So yeah. I'm selling you all on eBay starting at $1 each. I hope you can find a faster friend who will trace you like there's no tomorrow.

Sincerely,
Mikhaela

P.S. Please don't be offended that I'm keeping my Ottobres.

Meet the Brooklyn BSC!

Showing off some of our latest projects: Ana and her jumper, Valerie and her BurdaStyle shorts, Kathrin, me in my polka dot maternity modified Jalie 2005 T and self-drafted gingham maternity skirt holding another polka dot top; Dina and her glittery Burda magazine jacket, Cheryl and her lovely dress (pattern copied from vintage RTW...)

...And I don't mean the Babysitter's Club (though I totally had 40 of those books when I was 9).

It was a warm spring Sunday in Brooklyn yesterday and I took a long and lovely (if rather breathless--Cartoonist Baby is really squishing my lungs these days) stroll down to Carroll Gardens for my second monthly meeting of the Brooklyn BurdaStyle Sewing Club.

This club is just way too fun and fabulous! They (we, actually!) get together once a month, usually at an apartment in Brooklyn, share tasty snacks, and obsessively talk fabric, patterns, magazines, machines--you know the drill. There's a little show and tell where we go around in a circle, display our latest projects, talk about what we're working on next and share/solicit advice. Everyone has her (so far just women at the two meetups I attended) own distinct taste, but there seems to be a general love (unsurprisingly) for BurdaStyle web and magazine patterns.

And we bring fabric and envelope patterns to swap--I restrained myself this time and just destashed without making any new acquisitions, though last time I picked up a beautiful B&W silk charmeuse print for the great price of FREE.

Kathrin and Dina checking out the fabric/pattern swap pile... Dina is wearing the Burda 3/2010 magazine jumpsuit made from fabric from Spandex House.

I had been feeling a little lonely in my sewing pursuits--most of my local friends are more of the knitting persuasion!--and this has been a perfect antidote. Though the next meeting might be my last for a little while, depending on when Cartoonist Baby makes her debut...

The group officially has 25 members and counting, though at the two meetups I attended there were just 7 or 8 of us.

From L to R: club founders Ana and Valerie, Kathrin, me (Mikhaela) in my polka dot maternity modified Jalie 2005 T and self-drafted gingham maternity skirt; Dina in her Burda magazine jumpsuit (March 2010, I think), Cheryl.

Robin in a fabulous self-drafted jacket

Anyway, if you live in Brooklyn (or don't mind the subway ride) and love to sew, please drop Valerie a line, we'd love to have you!

Update: I should have mentioned--there are BurdaStyle sewing clubs all over the country (and world)! Here's a list, maybe there's one near you (or you can start one!)

Perfect Pattern Tracing Paper: A Love Story

It's a story as old as time itself: girl meets perfect pattern tracing material, girl loses perfect pattern tracing material, girl tries to find solace in arms of one substandard flimsy scratchy hard-to-write-on tracing material after another... girl finds perfect pattern tracing material and sews happily ever after!

They (and by "they" I mean Carolyn in a recent blog post, but she sparked quite a discussion!) say that some seamstresses/seamsters are Cutters and some are Tracers.

Well, once upon a time I was a Cutter. I'd buy a pattern, cut a size 12 or 14, make any adjustments directly to the delicate tissue, and hope it worked out. Sometimes it did...

And sometimes it didn't, as with the New Look faux wrap dress that turned out four sizes too big. But alas! The pattern was cut and there was no going back to try a smaller size. If I wanted to try it again... I'd have to buy it again.

Living in NYC, nowhere near those $1.99 pattern sales, this was no small expense.

Then there's the magazine formerly known as Burda World of Fashion--tracing is NOT optional. So I was a subscriber from 2005 to 2007—and never MADE A SINGLE THING. And so, during my Knitting Years, I sold all my back issues on Ebay.

All due to an irrational fear of tracing.

I did flirt here and there with various materials, based on tips gleaned from the PatternReview message boards: regular wrapping tissue paper, newsprint, multipurpose printer paper, sketch paper, artist's tracing paper. I even ordered some mysterious "Pattern Tracing Material" from Nancy's Notions. But they were all either too flimsy or too thick, too opaque or too transparent, or the sheets were just too tiny to trace an entire pattern in one piece. It was a serious Goldilocks situation.

And then Everything Changed. I took a fabulous beginning serger class this January ("Sweating With Your Serger" at Sew Right) to learn how to use my grandmother's neglected Kenmore. And we were required to purchase and use some pattern tracing material. So along with my hideous (if highly educational) sweatshirt and my serger, I found my pregnant self lugging home a giant roll of 45" wide pattern tracing material on the hour-and-a-half subway/bus combo ride home to Brooklyn.

It was love at first trace. This stuff was perfect--easy and smooth to write on, just stiff enough, just soft enough, just see-through enough. Pretty soon I was tracing EVERYTHING--vintage patterns, BurdaStyle magazine patterns, Jalie and Kwik Sew patterns, baby patterns... I was a tracing maniac! And if I ever made a mistake or wanted to trace another size when I got back to my pre-pregnancy weight or wanted to use a pattern again for Cartoonist Baby as she grew... NO PROBLEM.

Now the idea of cutting directly into a precious pattern (or, horrors, tissue fitting!) gave me the cold sweats.

But let's get to the point--one day, my perfect pattern tracing material ran out, and I realized I had lost the label and had no idea what is was called — Cut-A-Pattern? Trace-A-Pattern? I couldn't make it back to the middle of Queens in my now more delicate condition and Sew Right couldn't ship it to me. I went back to using random bits of typing paper. I even ordered a big roll of "Do-Sew" from Nancy's Notions, but found it scratchy, flimsy and nearly impossibly to write on.

... so I asked on the PatternReview message boards and someone told me the stuff was called Bosal Create-A-Pattern and I ordered a 10-yard roll for $17.99 plus shipping from Vogue Fabrics (they call it Pattern Tracing Interfacing) and now my life is complete and this blog post is nearly over!

Of course, this is just what works for me. Others swear by sewer paper (sewer as in plumbing, not sewing). Gertie likes Swedish tracing paper. The Fit For Real People folks hawk something they call "Perfect Pattern Paper" and Kwik Sew sells "KwikTrace" gridded material. And I do have non-transparent paper with gridded lines on it for making patterns from scratch, though I never actually use it. But now that I've found my lost Pattern Tracing Material love again, I think we'll be in a long-term relationship... no wandering eyes for me!

P.S. Just in case it's not obvious, I am not in any way affiliated with this or any other sewing-related company! But in case you need to identify this stuff by sight, here's what it looks like (it also comes on interfacing-like bolts):

P.P.S. Are you afraid of tracing? Or do you have a tracing material love of your own? Or better yet--do you know anywhere I can buy this stuff in Manhattan or Brooklyn and avoid the shipping costs?