A sewing lawyer can never have too many sheath dresses, right?

I'm lagging behind so much that I can't even remember if I previously mentioned my idea of making the "seamed dress" from the August, 2012 edition of BurdaStyle magazine.

No? Nor can I remember what initially drew me to this pattern. It probably wasn't the shininess or the bird cage...

However I looked it up on PatternReview and there were a couple of very nice versions. Then I let the idea percolate in my head for a few months before taking the next step of tracing the pattern.

And then I cut a muslin and let it sit for a few weeks while I did other things (secret machine knitting).

And yesterday, finally I finished the muslin. Behold my version of the shiny dress.

It's too tight. I did a very slap-dash job of grading the hip curve and this fabric has zero give.

It's also too long - this pattern is in Burda's "tall" size range (72 instead of 36, 76 instead of 38, etc.). They unhelpfully did not print the measurements for the tall sizing in the magazine but the charts are available on line. I'll save you the trouble. There is a 2cm difference in back waist length, and
an 8cm difference in the overall height between the size ranges. I traced without adjusting and (surprise!) I need to pinch out 2cm above my bust.

What do I like about this pattern? The interesting diagonals. They show up on the line drawing, and I hope to be able to make them pop in the concrete grey wool double crepe I've got lined up for this dress.