A Rose Gold Sequinned Papercut Sigma Dress

Ok, so I asked myself ‘Jen, do you think a full dress of rose gold sequins is a bit much?’. We all know the answer to this question… hell no! Also, you know, Christmas and that.

This was my very first venture into the world of sewing sequins. And man, it is a scary place. I diligently started my research into sewing with sequinned fabric, and was kind of pleased to see the advice to just sew  as you would a normal woven fabric. Ok… sounds too easy… but fine. My sequinned fabric, which was from Cotton Reel Studio, was basically mini sequins sewn onto a mesh. This was easy to cut out – I just used a rotary cutter. Some people recommend wearing glasses or something protective for your eyes when cutting out. I didn’t… living on the edge and all that.

I spent quite some time deciding on a pattern… I wanted something which wouldn’t be ‘too much’ considering that I was entirely using rose gold sequins. I decided to stick to the safety of a pattern I had used before. I went for the Papercut Patterns Sigma dress. I previously made this from a lovely wool fabric (here), and love the style. Really wearable. I knew some alterations I wanted to make from having made this before. Mainly I needed to be rid of the dreaded gapey neckline.

The sewing process was kind of ok… I did break 2 needles (!) but it was all fairly straightforward other than that. I fully lined the dress using an incredible lining fabric from Truro Fabrics – which really helped make the dress comfy to wear. No-one wants death by scratchy sequins do they?

Everything was going swimmingly until I discovered that the sequinned fabric was stretching. So when I had roughly assembled the dress and tried on… I could see it was looking a bit sloppy. Nooooo! What a waste of sequins! So I just had to, well, basically, bodge this dress together to make it fit! I removed so much fabric from side seams and the back seam before inserting the zip. It was crazy. But hey. The finished dress fits pretty damn well.

I’m super pleased with the finish of this dress – and can’t wait to wear it to a festive party. I first need to be invited to one though…!

Happy Christmas readers!

Pattern: Sigma by Papercut Patterns

Fabric: Sequinned fabric from Cotton Reel Studio, Lining fabric from Truro Fabrics

Size made: XS (bodice) graded to S (skirt)

Alterations made: Fix for gapey neckline and, well, some bodging this one together if I’m honest

P.S. Apologies for the dodgy photos. We are lacking much daylight at the minute. I will try to get some better photos very soon

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