My entire family is asleep, so this is what you get for photos of me wearing it.
Now for the title: I recently (last week of September) visited my brother living in Munich. And what do you do if you're in Munich for the last two weeks of september? You go to Oktoberfest, of course! (Or flee the city and rent out your apartment for hundreds of Euros to visitors. It's crazy, really.)
But we went, I wore my store-bought Dirndl, and we had a lot of fun. If you ever go, I really recommend the historical Wiesn: you pay an entrance fee of 3€, but every ride inside is 1€, you don't have any trouble finding a table inside the tents and they have brass bands instead of electrical guitars. And a dancefloor! But as I said, we did both, the historical and the modern Wiesn, and had a lot of fun. Part of that fun for me was ogling all the girls/women in their pretty dresses and wishing I had one for myself (my old dirndl is just not that fancy - black cotton dress, black cotton blouse... I like it, but I don't feel like a candy-wrapper ;) )
So, browsing reddit some day last week, I came across Burda 7057, and it was just perfect for what I had envisioned for myself. I got really excited, bought and downloaded it on friday, left Munich for my hometown and planned to go shopping for fabric on Saturday. You can imagine my face when my mother reminded me that stores would be closed on saturday - Day of German Unity, our national holiday. Damn. Also, stores are always closed on Sunday, so that meant two days delay until I could start! Luckily I recently bought a white cotton Ikea bedsheet to use for fabric, so I could get started on the blouse. That part was pretty straight forward, I ignored most of the instructions and flatfelled all my seams. Just seemed neater this way, plus it goes so much quicker when you do it by machine!
I didn't take any pictures, but I can show you my setup, because I think it's pretty neat:
That's my mother's Pfaff sewing machine on my desk, my new tiny iron and ironing surface on the fold-away workspace of my (currently out of order) 1943 Singer sewing machine and my laptop for music and the instructions.
On monday I could finally get the fabric. I found some beautiful turqouise synthetic taffeta, but at 10€ per meter (and this amazing shine!) I really didn't care about the fibre content. Finding proper fabric for the apron was a bit trickier and took me some time running around in the store, checking colours against each other, but in the end I opted for some silver - well, to be honest, I forgot what the fabric was called, but it's also synthetic. Add half a meter of lining fabric (cotton), some fusible interfacing and several metres of ribbon in two different widths, and you get 70€. Ouch. But then again, a good dirndl generally costs 100-150€, so since I don't pay myself hourly wages, I'm still coming out on top.
Not wanting to tape/glue more than I had to, I only printed out the bodice pattern pieces and just used squares and rectangles for the skirt and apron. I used piping (my favourite!) on the bodice to set out the front panel with the lacing and around the neck- and armholes, cutting bias strips out of the silver apron fabric.
The lady at the shop must have given me a pretty strong interfacing, my lining was stiff as cardboard when I finished fusing!
While I more or less followed the pattern instructions for the dress, I didn't gather the skirt to fit the waist (which probably wouldnt have worked anyway, seeing as I had 3m of skirt - I just never learn ;) ) but pleated it. That's the way I've seen it on pretty much every dirndl at the Wiesn, at last.
I put in a pocket again, this time on my front right side so that it's hidden under the apron. I wanted to make it accessible through one of the pleats, messed up my calculations, had to fix the slit (very crudely, I'm afraid) and redo the pocket where it belonged. It was a stupid mistake and cost me some time to work around, but now it's not even very visible without the apron - or can you find it?
My only other mistake: I ignored the fact that this pattern is meant for short people. They assume you're 168cm, but give you convenient lines on which to lengthen yor pattern - which I didn't do, despite that fact that at 175cm, I'm a lot taller than their average. Well, since I liked the fit of the bodice in general (and went through a lot of work before doublechecking the shoulders), I had to lengthen the shoulderstraps. After I put in the lining. And piping. Suffice to say, that was some more work that could have been avoided, but the join is barely visible now unless you're looking for it, so I don't mind anymore ;)
A very unlikely perspective for anyone to look at me.
What else? Oh yeah, I fixed the lacing hooks by machine, removing the presser foot and keeping the hooks in place by hand because that was the only way that worked, and I didn't break a single needle! Also it went much quicker than by hand ;)
I know it's blurry, my phone doesn't like closeups.
The apron was again pretty straight forward, I didn't even look at the directions here, so I can't tell you if I technically followed them, but I don't think I could have deviated much. I'm thinking of maybe putting some trim on it, but I'll decide that tomorrow. In hindsight, it's gathered into a pretty short strip (25cm), but I'm not sure if I'll ever fix it. Just something to keep in mind for next time.
All in all, sewing the dress took me about 10 hours over two days, and that could have been shorter if I hadn't made it more complicated for myself and hadn't made those mistakes. The blouse probably also took a couple of hours, but I honestly don't remember already... :D
Anyway, I love my Candywrapper Dirndl and will wear it on friday to the Wasn (same as Oktoberfest, but in Stuttgart*)
See you there! :D
*please don't tell anyone from Stuttgart I said that, though. They might run me out of the city >.<
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