New Project: Burda of the Past
Well, hello there. I have a crazy new project!
A little while ago, I acquired a huge number of old(ish) Burda issues for dirt cheap. They were from a lady who doesn’t sew any more and who was going to toss them out. Fortunately for me, her son convinced her that someone might still be interested in them. He listed them on a local website, where I stumbled upon them completely by accident. Even more fortunately for me, they didn’t actually want to make money by selling the magazines, so they were really, really cheap. And yet more fortunately, my dad was willing to drive me to the lady’s place to pick them up—which was a round trip of over four hours. And he was even proud of me for being about as crazy as he’s convinced he is, ha!
This all means that I am now the proud owner of an almost-complete collection of Burda issues from 1973 through 1999, with a few more issues from 1968, 1971, 1972 and 2000. Yes, that’s over 27 years of Burda magazines, and thus over 300 issues. Yes, they take up a lot of space (that I don’t have), and they allegedly weigh about 140kg (I haven’t checked). Yes, the whole thing is rather crazy.
I’ve mostly sorted through the 14 (!) IKEA boxes I brought home, and as far as I can tell, the lady I got the magazines from didn’t use them much and kept everything neatly in order, including the pattern sheets.
So … Here’s my new project: I am planning to make two things (probably mostly garments, but who knows) from each year. One of them will be chosen by me, the other by my boyfriend. I was initially only going to make one each, but then my boyfriend really wanted to choose something for me from 1968, so I decided to make twice as many things. I’m nothing if not consistent and systematic in my craziness!
The first two projects have already been chosen and I’ve cut out toiles of them. They will be my boyfriend’s pick from 1968 and my pick from 1999. 1999 was actually an excellent year, it seems, and there were quite a few things that caught my eye while checking the issues for completeness—without even really looking at them. I ended up choosing a garment that I really need rather than just something random and fun.
Overall, my goal is to mostly choose projects that I or someone else can actually use. That might not always be possible or fun—but at least I’ll try to go for useful wardrobe additions rather than crazy frivolous projects. I’ll also try to steer my boyfriend toward wearable garments rather than crazy over-the-top 80s madness, but that might be hard for … most of the 80s?…
I’m sure that this silly project will take me ages to complete—if I’ll even keep it up. But it’s all for fun, so who cares? It might keep me from buying ever more patterns that I never get around to making up!