So I survived a batch sew slog and ended up with three lovely new pairs of Burda Style pleat-front trousers at the end of it all! 

Yeah me!!

But, I’m not gonna lie – it’s been a bit of a struggle! We’ll get to that in due course, but let’s start at the beginning.

These pleated front trousers come from the 09/2019 edition of the Burda Style magazine. I tried to find you guys a nice easy link to the pattern but the Burda Style website is such a nightmare that I couldn’t do it. And the idea of slogging through 24 odd pages of result for ‘trousers’ just didn’t fit into the limited time I have allocated to this blog.

Sorry!!

OK, so let’s start with the fun stuff. 

Fabric!!!!

Since this was a batch sew, the fabrics were luckily close enough in the colour spectrum that I could make this work without needing to constantly change thread colour.

So here are my fabric choices, in all their glory.

For the grey checked pair I was heavily influenced by the version in the magazine. I chose this grey and blue toned an Italian wool from Fabworks Mill, which doesn’t seem to be available anymore. I have yet to be disappointed by a suiting wool that I’ve purchased from Fabworks and their prices are sooooo reasonable.

The black pair is a mystery fabric purchased at a fabric market many years ago. It had the words “A Touch of Cashmere” printed all along the selvedge and it’s quite lovely. But, it does still have a slightly plastic-y sheen and feel. so I assume it’s some sort of polyester and wool blend. It is quite thick but still drapes well, making it great for these Burda Style pants.

The navy pair is made out of my latest fabric addiction – viscose linen noil from Blackbird Fabrics (sorry, couldn’t find any more navy on the website, so I’ve linked to another colour. My link game is not really on par today!!). This fabric is just everything.

I have no words for how much I adore it!

Whilst it is a lovely weight for Spring through to Autumn, I will likely have to wear tights or leggings underneath in the depth of winter. But it’s not the fabric’s fault that it prefers warmer climates. After all, I could say the same thing about myself!

My only specific fabric note is that the linen noil fabric stretched out quite a bit while sewing. I would definitely recommend stay stitching. I didn’t have the prescience to do this and ended up having to take the navy pair in at the side seams. 

Totally my own fault!

Burda Style Trousers

OK, so let’s get into it.

This project caused me some major grief, although it wasn’t the pattern itself which was, per se, the problem.

(Warning: The remainder of this blog post contains detailed discussion about size and not fitting into Burda’s non-inclusive size range. If those discussions could be triggering for you, please give it a miss!)

First up, I love these trousers. They are just want I imagined they would be! Well, mostly. The harsh light of these photos have revealed some imperfections around the waistband and fly fronts but a belt can always hide my shoddy sewing if necessary!

So, all-in-all, I think this is a great sewing pattern.

But, this was the first time I have ever sewn a Burda Style pattern and it will probably be my last time.

Why I intend to never sew a Burda Style pattern again!!!

Here’s why.

First, those pattern sheets are a total pain to trace – sooooo many lines!!!!!

I did not find it at all intuitive, as a newbie, to locate which sheets to use and which lines on it to focus on. But, I get that this is something that comes with habit. And you can always download a PDF version of the pattern you want if you really need (ummm, if you can find it on the website, that is!)

So this is a nuisance but not a deal-breaker.

Second, having to add in seam allowances drives me a tad nuts. Why make thousands of sewists across the world perform an irritating precision-based task when, with a few clicks of a button, a computer could do it for all of us? There is already so much room for error in the sewing process. At the stages of tracing, cutting, altering. Each further layer of potential human error exacerbates the risk of something going seriously wrong. So why add the addition of seam allowances into that mix?

But again, I get that this is perhaps a pet peeve of a spoilt indie-pattern sewist, so not a deal breaker.

The deal breaker was as follows.

It turns out that I do not fit into Burda Style’s “standard” size range.

Or, in other words, I do not fall within an arbitrarily-defined range of what an acceptable ‘standard’ woman is supposed to look like.

Umm, yeah. Sure. Whatever.

As I do at the start of every project, I took my measurements and was dismayed to see that my waist and hip measurements fell outside the available size range for this pattern.

I know that this experience is not unique and that, for many talented, creative and brilliant sewists out there, not fitting into non-inclusive size ranges is an unfortunate everyday experience. 

The fact that it has happened to me once certainly doesn’t make me special. But it has been rather eye opening for someone who generally receives the benefit of size privilege, in addition to the host of other benefits that come from being a white, middle-class, able-bodied woman.

No matter how much the rational part of my brain understands that these are just numbers and averages, arbitrary ones at that, when you see that you don’t fit into a size range, well, frankly, it just kind of sucks.

Burda Style: Lack of size inclusivity

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the sewing world, the wildly popular indie pattern company, Closet Case Patterns released their first pattern in a more inclusive size range – with more to follow. Closet Case are not the first indie sewing company become more size inclusive and they will not be the last.

Size inclusivity is increasingly being called for in the indie pattern sewing world!

I will never forget a couple of years ago when my mother, who does not fall into a non-inclusive size range, told me she wanted to try sewing again after 30 years. I was so excited and started telling her all about how much the sewing world had changed from her days of Big 4 only sewing. I was desperate to share the indie pattern world I had found so inspiring with her. Until I actually tried to find her some indie patterns which included her size as a “back-to-sewing” gift. The list of indie pattern options, which I had always taken for granted, suddenly dwindled dramatically. I realized that the best choice for her was still to buy sewing patterns from the same companies she purchased from 30 years ago.

So much for a home sewing revolution.

All this is to say that size inclusivity is an issue that matters to our sewing community.

And so it should.

In my sewing practice, I tend to just focus on what I’m sewing and what I love/hate about it, without really putting myself in any categories when it comes to size. I totally acknowledge that it is a privilege to be able to do this – it’s only possible because I usually DO fit into the available size range.

Until I opened an edition of Burda Style magazine, that is! I have generally the size privilege of being able to walk into almost any RTW store (although why would you want to!) or pick up an indie sewing pattern and fit into the sizes available. This is the first time I have found myself outside the available size range. As a result of this, I don’t think that my experiences resonates with the level of difficulty experiences by many other sewists, so I don’t really want to occupy space on this important issue.

But I did find the very limited range of the Burda Style’s ‘standard’ range unacceptable and I wanted to take a stand against it. So my message to Burda Style is a very simple one: my size is not non-‘standard’.

In my view, the fact that Burda Style also has a specific selection of patterns in larger sizes available in each edition doesn’t let it off the hook for a lack of size inclusivity.

To the contrary.

Maybe it’s just a matter of personal taste, but I often find the larger sized options in the Burda Style uninteresting. The very opposite of fashion forward. Even going beyond my personal style preferences, I feel that having separate size ranges with entirely different options perpetuates an idea that there is one set of fashion for ‘standard’  women and another set of fashion if your body falls outside this arbitrarily-defined norm. Burda style, please understand that suggesting to women, both those who fit into your ‘standard’ size range and those who do not, that my body is an aberration, you perpetuate an absurd level of expectation about women’s bodies and the extent to which they are deserving of ‘fashion’.

So, IMHO, not good enough Burda Style.

The almost Alphonse Trousers

For the record, I was so annoyed at seeing that I didn’t fit into the size range that I was about to sew the Alphonse Trousers by Republique du Chiffon instead. Where I do fit into the largest size!

However, upon pulling the Alphonse Trousers out of the pattern envelope I discovered that, even though it was a rather pricey indie pattern, it was printed with the pieces overlapped, so it had to be traced and I still needed to add in the seam allowances.

So, despite the fact that I desperately wanted to be able to make the Alphonse trousers instead of these Burda Style ones, I found that the Alphonse Trousers were non-user friendly and, as I also really preferred a couple of the details of the Burda Style ones (those cuffs and the slightly higher waist), I decided to go with Burda Style.

Grudgingly!!!

My Burda Style Pleat Front Trousers: Ginger Jeans to the Rescue

So, in the end, I graded the largest size out slightly at the waist and hips to ensure that the pattern would fit me.

I found that the waistband of the Burda Style pattern, of the straight rectangular variety, did not fit me well at all. So I used the Ginger Jeans waistband as my base to create a curved waistband adapted to the specificities of this pattern.

I’ve used the Ginger Jeans waistband on more pairs of pants than I can count now!

I also added belt loops because I feel that they really elevate the look into a more professional one. Although, I have to say, folding and pressing the little tiny edges under of 15 belt loops was enough to leave me almost swearing off of batch sewing forever!!!

The only other change I made was to the pocket shape. I found the original one too small and shallow. If you’re gonna have pockets, why not make ’em useful!

I didn’t really follow the instructions at all – I had a French version of the Burda Style magazine and it hurt my head too much to try to concentrate on them. So I’m afraid that I can’t offer much in terms of advice as to the quality of the instructions.

Apart from the waistband, however, I thought that the pattern fit very well. All importantly, I didn’t have to make any crotch adjustments. The crotch actually sits quite low, making it both comfortable and accommodating of my long torso. All in all, I liked almost everything about these trousers, except for the fact that, according to Burda Style, someone of my size shouldn’t be wearing them!

The need for some menswear inspired work-ready trousers has been a wardrobe gap that I identified months ago and I’m really happy that these three babies are now in rotation.

But the process of making them – the project fatigue that can come from batch-sewing, combined with the non-inclusive sizing, has been pretty sew-jo sapping. The fact that, where I live, it has been raining for about a month non-stop may also be a contributing factor to my sewing malaise!

I do still have one more fabric in my stash that I had been hoping would become another pair of these trousers – it’s the Drawn Check Stretch Cotton from The Fabric Store.  I didn’t include it in the batch sew since it required entirely different thread colours. Now I have to find the motivation to get that one under my machine too! I guess it’s going to feel super speedy compared to these three, right?

As soon as the sew jo returns…

Oh and, finally, a little P.S! If you like to get your blog hits through Bloglovin’, feel free to follow me over there: you can find me here. And you can find me on Instagram here.