So, I decided to first do a little organizing. Many seamstresses photocopy the "All Styles at a Glance" pages and place them in a 3-ring binder for easy perusal. I had been doing that, but I always found myself dragging out the actual magazine each time I was curious about suggested fabrics and fabric requirements. As well, as useful as the line drawings are, I find myself far more inspired by the actual model shots - showing the garment made up and on a real person.
So, decided to undertake an organizational odyssey (sometimes us obsessive compulsive folks have to make up our own brand of fun). I went through each issue that I own and put together pages (arranged by month and year) containing model shots, line drawings, fabric suggestions and yardage for any and all patterns that struck my fancy. Burda made this all the easier for me by putting archives of the last three years on line. I have included a screen shot of the February 2008 page. Although it was time-consuming, it was really easy to do in Word (any word processing program would also work) - just cut, paste and add text boxes.Now I can flip through these pages to determine what will make it on to my sewing list. I already have a bunch of "must-sews" and I am in the process of matching fabrics to these future residents of my clothes closet.
There are a few things I noticed during this endeavour. Firstly, some months I am in love with almost everything in the issue and other months I am really quite apathetic about the majority of offerings. Does anyone else find this to be the case with them too?
Secondly, it is amazing how often Burda repeats certain style lines. They usually spruce things up by adding different details, but on the whole there is a lot of overlap. I guess this just goes to show that Carolyn is right - when you find something that works, why reinvent the wheel? Even Burda has a whole slew of TNT patterns that they periodically revisit.
ETA: Burda Archives 2004 - 2008 - thank you Sigrid!!
