What I Wore to the Wedding

Last weekend we were lucky enough to attend a family wedding. It was a wonderful day with lots of eating, drinking and being rather merry with family we don’t get to see too often. 

So of course I needed to make myself a frock. I wanted something that I could wear again afterwards as I really don’t get to go to many weddings or fancy events anymore. I love the Japanese style and aesthetics of Cos clothing and thought I would adapt the Ada dress to reflect this.

Because my body shape has changed over the years I thought it might just be easier to model the fabric directly onto my Mimiquins mannequin rather than try adapting a flat paper pattern. As you may have seen in a recent social media post. 

What I did to make my pattern

I cut out enough fabric to create the wrap-over I needed and pinned and drew out the style I wanted directly onto the cotton fabric. I have never been particularly happy with the way the Ada sleeve sits. So I adapted it to create a proper Dolman sleeve. You can learn how to create a Dolman sleeve in the Pattern Cutting Series available for members of The Cutting Room. 

Once I had this roughly correct I took the fabric off the mannequin and used that as my pattern. Once on paper, I could true up the pattern pieces to make sure it all balanced and fitted back together correctly. Then I remade a toile from the new pattern to double check it fitted as I wanted it to. 

When the bodice was correct I used that to make the adaptations to the skirt to make sure both skirt and bodice fitted together perfectly. I made up the whole dress as another toile to double check everything, as I really didn’t have time to unpick the proper dress if it wasn’t working.

Now for the sewing

Once the pattern was done I just needed the fabrics. And I wanted something that would hold the structure of the dress and not be too drapey. So I chose navy blue cotton drill for the main dress. I could style this with different belts and shoes etc afterwards. But I particularly wanted to add some bright green to go with my fabulous trainers. Yes -  I know trainers at a wedding! But the bride wore bottle green Converse and looked awesome! So I knew mine would be fine.

So to incorporate the green I wanted, I stitched lines of topstitching all the way along the Obi inspired, extra long, wrap around belt. It tied in quite nicely without being too matchy matchy.

During the making up process one particular thing to note is that the cross over part of the bodice is cut almost on the bias. Which means it is liable to stretch out of shape a fair bit. When making up the toile, I just sewed a stay stitch along that front edge. But even that wasn’t good enough to hold the fabric in place and prevent it from stretching. When I laid the fabric over the top of the pattern to double check I could clearly see that it had been stretched. 

This meant I needed to use an alternative to make sure that this didn’t happen when making up the proper dress. So I made sure to attach some Vlieseline edge tape to the front neckline of the dress before sewing anything at all. This made a massive difference to the finished outcome and enabled the neckline to stay put! Rather important for a wrap-over dress. 

I am really pleased with the finished dress and even got a compliment from my daughter too.

Jules x

• Vintage buckle broach - Corries Fancy Goods
• Necklace - I can’t remember
• Trainers - Puma
• Bag - Vintage Karen Millen - Well it’s vintage now as I’ve had it so long.
• Lipstick - Models own