A girly swirly wedding guest dress
Back in August I attended the wedding of an old school friend of mine, at a gorgeous hotel in St Albans. I decided some time beforehand that I wanted to be good enough at dressmaking to be able to make my own dress to wear on the day of the wedding. I had only been sewing for a few months, so the very idea of this seemed a tad daunting! But I knew I wanted to make my outfit myself.
I opted for the Flora Dress (variation 2) from By Hand London. I’m not really one to go for anything super girly usually, but this dress jumped out at me. I think it was the neckline which sold it to me – I loved how classy it looked.
Once the pattern arrived I got to work with sourcing my fabric. I found this quite hard! Mostly because I’m quite picky with patterns and colours. Then I came across the fabrics for sale from Sew Over It. So many gorgeous ones to choose from!! I’m always drawn to blues and greens though – I guess because they suit me – probably because the colour contrasts against my hair! So I ended up going with this vintage blue & cream floral fabric. It’s a lightweight cotton, which I figured would work well with the pattern. I thought the vintage look would really suit the style of the dress.
Before the fabric arrived I had a bit of time to knock up a toile. This was really helpful as the back of the dress was a bit gapey on me – so I was able to fix this before starting on the posh new fabric.
I also decided that I would try a new technique on this dress – one which I hadn’t tried yet. This was to fully line it…! I bought some plain ivory coloured cotton poplin from John Lewis in Cambridge. It meant more work to do this, but figured that the finish would be worthwhile.
Sewing of the dress went really well. I followed the pattern instructions as well as the sewalong on the By Hand London website. This was so so helpful! I’m quite a visual person so I always find that pictures help.
I also had the task of inserting an invisible zipper… This was covered in my course so I had already had a very small amount of experience of putting invisible zips in. So I wasn’t entirely excited about putting one in! They can be a tad tricky! I used the tutorial on the By Hand London website to keep me on track. I did have a minor heart attack at one point, when I thought I had sewn it all on the wrong way! Turned out it was ok though 🙂
Then I got to the point of hemming. The instructions recommend hemming by hand – so I duly did so. I had never done an awful lot of hand sewing – I guess I have a vague recollection of doing a few things at school. I did my research on blind slip stitching to find a how to guide. I knew it was going to take a while, and I had moments beforehand where I toyed with the idea of machine hemming to save time. But I went ahead with doing it by hand – and I am so pleased that I did. It took probably a whole evening to do this – but I did it from the comfort of my sofa and found it to be a pretty relaxing experience!
I gave the whole thing a good press once it was finished, it looked so beautiful! Very very chuffed with myself!
Wearing it was kind of exciting – I mean, the fact that I made it and all. It fitted beautifully – I made in size 8, and made the alteration to the back to stop it gaping open. The fabric was a dream to wear too – so soft!
This dress was slightly out of my comfort zone as I don’t really wear much that is too girly… and this dress is definitely very floral and feminine. So decided to team it with a fairly chunky gold ‘wide collar’ necklace from Warehouse and my Carvela ‘Klunk’ sandals from Kurt Geiger.
I also had my hair put up by a very amazing hairdresser, with this chunky French plait. Absolutely loved it!!
It was an amazing day with hilarious friends – fun memories made!
Anyway, hope you like the dress. Shortly after this, I got to making another Flora dress for the next wedding of the season. Photos of this to follow very soon!
Peace and love
Jen x
