Burda Style For people who sew

Halloween is over and as you’re slowly emerging from your sugar coma you are no doubt wondering, “What will I do this this year’s costume?” After countless hours slaving over a sewing machine only to have your design worn for a few precious hours, it feels such a shame to have to store your hard work into the back of a closet. So how can you recycle your costume? This article demonstrates 8 different ways (from places to donate your duds to links to reconstructing parts of your design) you can keep your costume alive for years to come.

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Sewing Vintage! This week I’m going to tell you about three of the most common pattern alterations needed for vintage sewing patterns. Personally, I like vintage style but I like the fit to be modern. So I make several alterations for a cute contemporary look, as well as for ease of wearing without vintage foundation garments like bullet bras and girdles.

All of these changes require that you start with some sort of fitting step. This can be a tissue fitting, a basted fitting, or a muslin. (Check out the book Fit For Real People for help with all this.) Making a muslin wasn’t a common practice of home sewing until recently, so the method used would be to tissue fit the pattern, and then machine baste all darts and seams for a basted fitting. Making a muslin never hurts, though, and it will ensure a perfect fit every time.

So as you all know I am a bit of a fanatic about Halloween, but I just had to share this with you! Check out this amazing video from M.A.C., the Lichtenstein inspired costume is just mind blowing! Maybe next year

found via TashaMarie

Are you dressing up for Halloween this year? If you’re stuck on a costume idea you should take a look through Alexander McQueen’s archives to be fully inspired! His runway looks are fit for the likes of Blade Runner or a Philip K. Dick novel, they are truly extraordinary! When I was little, I always went as a specific character or theme: Debbie Gibson, Fortune Teller, Punk- but as I get older, I find it more exciting to just make something extravagant (a la McQueen) and have a ball. We have some great ideas on BurdaStyle, like our Static Cling

1. Where are you from and/or where do you live?
I am originally from the Netherlands, but I have been living in Copenhagen (Denmark) for the past 4 years. I moved to another country for my job, I am a scientist and just obtained a PhD in Evolutionary Biology at the University of Copenhagen. Next year I am hoping to move to Australia (Perth) for a few years, also for work. I am lucky to have a great boyfriend who is happy to move with me!

A while back my beau and I launched a limited edition series of custom “I (heart)” organic tote bags & t-shirts as Dahl & Dane. The project proved to be quite successful, we were absolutely swamped with orders, and up to our ears in screen-printing madness. Currently we’re on hiatus from screen-printing mania, designing a new line I’ve mentioned in the past, but every once in a while I’ll get a very sweet email from someone who absolutely will die if they can’t get one of our custom pieces. So I really can’t say No…

Our great friends over at CRAFT and SINGER have joined forced to bring you a fun new contest! Here’s a snippet:

CRAFT and SINGER® present the Me, My Scarf, and I Contest. Fall is upon us, and what better accessory than a scarf! We invite all of our crafty readers to participate and create a sewn scarf that best describes your personality! All entries must have some portion created using a sewing machine.

Deadline for entries is 11:59 p.m. PDT November 23, 2009. Each entry will be judged based on the following criteria: creativity of design, description of how the scarf represents the creator, and the use of a sewing machine in the creation process.

Find out more!

- Looking for places in your neighborhood to find great fabrics, notions or sewing classes?
- Traveling out of town, and searching for a great local sewing lounge?
- Have a favorite local sewing store you think others should know about?

If you fall in any of these categories, the BurdaStyle Resource Map is made for you!

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Sewing Vintage! Through writing my blog, I’ve realized just how intimidating the world of vintage patterns can be. The prices vary wildly, the sizing is different from contemporary patterns, and the styles can be very intricate and complex. Not to mention how different the patterns themselves are: the instructions are much more abbreviated than today’s patterns. And some pattern tissues are even unprinted, meaning you only have perforated holes to guide you, rather than the nice black lines and symbols that we have now.

This week I wanted to focus on an age group that we rarely feature: kids! As Halloween is right around the corner I’ve created a collage of some adorable costume ideas for kids as well as links to How-Tos, video tutorials, and patterns. Some of these costumes need very few ingredients to make you and your little one smile. Happy Halloween!

PB&J Sandwich

Basic Materials: Two square pieces of upholstery foam cushions, light brown and purple felt, suspenders, brown paint. Make It! -Kaboose

1. Where are you from and/or where do you live?
I’m from Heidelberg, Germany. It’s quite a “green” city, which explains why my mindset is eco-friendly and I’m inspired by the environment…I do my part by making things myself, recycling old fashion, or creating my own fashion out of organic materials which I know weren’t produced in sweatshops.

2. What was the 1st thing you made? How did you start sewing?
My mother is a seamstress, so maybe I was born with that sewing-gene! Actually, my mother never wanted to be bothered with my silly sewing projects when I was a kid and so I discovered at an early age that I could try it out myself. Nowadays, if someone tells me I can’t do something, I find some way to do it anyway. My mother’s impatience shaped me into the woman I’ve become, a woman who doesn’t take no for an answer!

Just a quick update: We are so happy to announce that you now have an edit/delete button for all the comments you make! YAY! I know that we have all been looking forward to this for some time, so thank you to our team at Area 17!

We are also in the process of going through and linking projects to the patterns that were used and we would love you to help us. Many of the links didn’t get transferred when we were updating the site and, as we find this a vital part of BurdaStyle and the concept of open source, we are going to do manually link projects to their patterns. Either you or we may have to add some info to your projects from the drop down options (season/material etc) as creations transferred from the old site are missing these new classifications. Keep in mind, you, as the member, can always edit/add information to your own projects. Please help! If you have any questions please feel free to contact us.

We had 60+ amazing entries in this competition and some hard decisions to make.
The skirts were scrutinized by the team and then sent on to Wenlan Chia, Founder and Designer of Twinkle by Wenlan, who made the tough final decision.

I was just looking at the popular blog Weekend Designer to see what had been posted lately and I was sad to see that the blog, after it’s 100th post, has come to an end. I did, however, stumble upon some extremely valuable tips that I will strive to apply to my own life as a designer and I hope they can help you too. Below are Don from Weekend Designer’s tips to turning your inspiration into productivity.

“If you’re in a hurry or if the ideas come too fast, it’s difficult to convert them into a design.” Be Disciplined – Pattern-making can be hard work and takes concentration. A defined work-space and a preplanned