Bergère de France Magazine 182: A Review

I've allowed myself to get sadly behind on my Bergère de France Magazine reviews -- at present there are four issues on the waiting list. However, here is my review of the first of the four, and I'm going to try to do one a week until I'm caught up. Let's have a look at the patterns contained in issue 182, which is a winter issue for children aged 0-2.

Patterns #01 Girl's Cardigan, and #02 Boy's Cardigan. These are... undistinguished.

Patterns #03 Boy's Cardigan, and #04 Girl's Roll Edge Cardigan. Again, these are nothing special.

Patterns #05 Girl's Cardigan and Hat, and #06 Boy's Cardigan and Hat. Classic baby wear.

Pattern #07 Sleeveless Jacket. I'd have named this the Shapeless Jacket.

Pattern #08 Hooded Sleeveless Jacket. This one's basic but it's fine that way. Bouclé pieces really do need to be kept simple as the detail doesn't show effectively anyway.

Pattern #09 Sleeveless Fair Isle Jacket. This one's quite cute.

Pattern #10 Hooded Jacket. Another simple bouclé jacket.

Patterns #11 Boy's Hooded Jacket, #12 Girl's Hooded Jacket. Not bad, although they do look unnecessarily bulky. Surely the sleeves could have a little shaping?

Pattern #12 Dungarees. These are pretty cute. The appliquéd patches on the blue version are a nice touch.

Pattern #13 Fair Isle Dungarees. These aren't bad. I think I'd like the heart waist band better if it had another couple of stripes above and below.

Patterns #16 Dress, #17 Dress, and #18 Dress. Designating these three versions of the same dress as three different patterns is really pushing it, Bergère de France. Especially when the dress is so slapdash. It looks like a charity pupil uniform from a turn-of-the-last-century convent school.

Patterns #19 Dress, and #20 Openwork Dress. This must be the "dress uniform" that the aforementioned charity pupils from a turn-of-the-last-century convent school would have worn for class and cathedral services. The previous uniform must have been what they wore when on dish washing and floor scrubbing detail.

Patterns #21 through #28, assorted hats and slippers. These aren't terrible, but there really are so many cuter cat hat and slipper designs out there.

Patterns #29 through #35. Here's an assortment of boy's and girl's embroidered blankets, toy bees, sleeping bags, and a "product holder". I like the blankets, but the bees creep me out a little (why the glasses on the boy bee and the belt on the girl bee?), the sleeping bags look crude and slapped together, and the hanging stuff holder would stretch all to hell if it got any significant amount of use.

Nappy Holder. This is another item I wouldn't knit, because it would stretch out and doesn't look like anything special anyway. Some things really ought to be sewn.

Pattern #36, Hooded Jacket. This is a cute piece. I like the fastenings, which give a rather classic item a modern feel.