It's a Stitch Up

'Jessica' by Lyn Ashworth

By the time you read this Zoe will have walked down the isle, so it’s safe to reveal our design ideas.

Zoe tried on a few dresses, she really liked vintage style lace and found that a fitted style that flared from the thigh particularly suited her. Her favourite was ‘Davina’ by Sassi Holford, all-over lace with a crossover sweetheart neckline, lace cap sleeves and slight fishtail. The dress retails for £1700 (yes, lace dresses are expensive).

I loved the shape of the dress too and felt that this was something I could achieve. We decided to make a few changes to the over all design to suit Zoe’s taste and my sewing skills.

'Davina' by Sassi Holford

• The original dress was corseted – Zoe wasn’t keen on this and I didn’t feel it was necessary.
• Zoe wanted proper straps as lace cap sleeves were not likely to stay put.
• Zoe didn’t want a train and didn’t want it to skim the floor
• Neither of us particularly liked the V back and Zoe wanted a higher back
• I wasn’t confident about button closure, so I suggested a side opening with concealed zip, Zoe agreed
• Zoe suggested beaded lace on the bodice. We couldn’t find anything suitable so I suggested beading it myself.

'Davina' by Sassi Holford

With just these pictures to work from, the shape of the bodice and the skirt were pure guess work. I made the skirt flare out from a higher point at the back than the front to give Zoe a bit of extra movement, while keeping the close fitting effect from the front. When deciding how much to flare the skirt, I use a skirt I own as reference. To create the front of the bodice, I drew on first toile the height we thought it should be in the centre on each side of the front, and under the arms. I transferred these measurements to paper and joined the dots with a curve. This worked remarkably well. I had to increase the size of the top bodice darts to account for this being a low garment. It all worked out remarkably well.