Another oddity with Burda 110 5/2008

I’ve finally finished Burda 110 5/2008, a biker style mini dress with lots of fiddly details and hardware.

Burda’s famously terse instructions all worked out in the end and I’m pleased with the result, but there’s one feature I don’t understand. Here are the lower pockets, which are bellows style, so there’s a pleat strip between the front of the pocket and the dress body to allow expansion room. (Burda calls them poacher’s pockets but I don’t think I’ll be fitting any stolen rabbits into these.)

They have rivets on the bottom corners. Rivets are normally placed to reinforce areas of stress, but I’m not sure I’ve got these right. Burda’s instructions say to ‘keep the pleat piece free’ while attaching, and in the technical drawing they definitely don’t look like they are meant to go through the body of the dress.

Burda 110 5/2008 line art, Burdastyle.ru

So I’ve just put mine through the pocket front where they achieve nothing but decoration. I couldn’t even catch the seam allowances down with the rivet on most of them because I added the rivets after sewing the pockets to the dress. Had I realised earlier that they don’t go through the dress front or near the attachment seam I could have done them before, which would have been much easier.

So does anyone know how these are meant to work? I’m perfectly happy with the finished dress, and the pockets are never going to be asked to hold anything heavier than a phone, but I’m curious.

14 thoughts on “Another oddity with Burda 110 5/2008”

  2. I suppose if someone wanted less fullness they could have gone through despite instructions, but purely an added detail. I love all the detail here. And vicariously enjoying your productivity. I am slammed at work and exhausted by end of day, but do see the light…

      1. Hopefully in another week or so, I can get to my machine. Part of the lack of time is that I’m trying to be healthier, including going back to running and yoga. They take time!

  3. I think they are just for decoration. Looking forward to seeing more photos. The dress looks great and how I imagine it IRL based on the line art. I was surprised by the look of it when seeing the bright yellow cotton poplin(?) version on the Russian Burda site.

    1. Thanks! Yeah cotton poplin seems a bit too lightweight for something like this, although I guess it would make all the details easier to sew. But it doesn’t seem sturdy enough for exposed metal zips.

  5. That color looks tough to photograph! I thought it was black from the first picture, then remembered it was gray. I can’t think where else one would put decorative rivets on that dress, other than the places you put them. I have taken to reinforcing top edges of pockets with rivets (easier and faster than bar tacks) but nobody would see them under the flaps.
    I got a chuckle out of “poacher pockets”–they call them something like “suitcase pockets” in the Russian translations. That just goes to my point that Burda German-to-English translators don’t know proper sewing terminology; aren’t those usually called cargo pockets? But speaking of poachers, Mr. Cantankerus has a RTW coat, made by Orvis (a Vermont company that caters to hunters) with a plastic-lined “game pocket” on the back. Plastic-lined so it doesn’t leak, eew 🙂 He doesn’t hunt so we just joke about putting restaurant leftovers into it without a doggy bag.

  7. They’re for decoration I think, as everyone else is saying. Your work is always so meticulously sewn, just a joy to behold. Have fun wearing your latest creation!

  8. What a stunningly cool yet crisp dress!
    I cannot think of a functional purpose for those rivets, so bling is my guess. Thanks for sharing, looking forward to images of you wearing it.

  9. Just checked a couple of Barbour jackets. One has rivets at the top corners of the bellows pockets under the flap as Cantankera suggests, so I think yours may indeed be there just to attach the “je ne sais quoi”.
    😉

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