Burda 6456 Blouses - Stripes

I  purchased Endless Sea Embroidered Border Cotton Fabric 45"-Blue & White Stripe ( JOANN Fabrics) to make  a multipurpose tunic style garment for a recent warm weather vacation. Something that could be worn as a swim suit cover up or as a tunic over leggings for drinks /dinner.

 “CheapO” me had only purchase 1.5 yards, so I needed a fairly simple tunic pattern that used minimal fabric.  Burda 6456, with some modifications, met my requirements.   “These Misses' blouses feature a shoulder yoke and a stand collar and can do without a fastening, thanks to a slit in the center front seam! View A, the longer style, also has side slits and simple cuffed sleeves. Sleeveless View B is adorned with flounces in front.

For view A, the longer style, I had to make a couple pattern modifications to reduce fabric usage .

• Eliminated center front seam and made a facing for the slit area of the front neckline.
• Folded out tucks in sleeve head and added a bit of height to shoulder cap. Shortened sleeves to above elbow length.
• Trimmed the embroidered border on the sleeve. 

The finished garment worked beautifully for its intended purposes. Only complaint is the fabric is rather lightweight and when wearing with white leggings I needed to wear a white camisole to eliminate the easily seen  color difference between white legging and my skin at the waist.

Burda 6456 tunic

Burda 6456 - in cruise ship cabin



Here are other ideas for tops made out of similar fabric

 I also cut out and sewed  view B, the  sleeveless flounced version, out of some large scraps of striped menswear shirting. The center front seam is definitely needed for this style.  The bottoms of the flounces are sewn in the center front seam up to the point where the neckline opening starts. Then the flounce and garment front  SA’s are clipped to the seam line stopping point and totally flipped over before being sewn to finish the neckline slit. It is one of those sewing techniques that throws up a mental “proceed with caution” warning for me. One overzealous snip and you have an unfixable hole.

The pattern instructions have you hem the flounce by turning under the 5/8” seam allowance, zig zag stitch close the folded edge and trim off the excess seam allowance close to the stitching.  I prefer non raw edge hems, but thought “why not try it” especially since the fabric was high thread count cotton and the flounce hem edge is on the bias (non-fray). For now the  finish looks fine, but the true test will be how it looks after a few washes.

Burda 6456 flounce hem

Burda 6456 flounce hem trimming

Burda provides the pattern for the bias trim strip but it has a 3/8 inch seam allowance. The sleeve opening has a 5/8 inch seam allowance.  The sleeve opening seam allowance must be trimmed down to 3/8” before sewing on the binding strip.  This is in the instructions, but I never read them until after I look at the seam binding width and say “what the…, this isn’t going to be wide enough to cover the trimmed seam neatly.”

My striped flounce top is a bit cropped because of the size of the fabric scraps I used to make it.  Until the weather settles down ( 70 degrees one day, snow the next) I'll wear it with a sweater. Though I couldn't resist pushing for spring dressing by pairing it with a pair of white corduroy pants.

Burda 6456

Burda 6456 View B