In my latest YouTube video I’m talking about how I researched patterns try and find something that had all the features that I’d picked out during my epic try-on of all the dresses last week. If you haven’t seen that first video or read the associated post then you should start there. Life will make a lot more sense if you do! (that’s a big promise isn’t it!!).
So firstly I looked for something like the green dress with a bow at the waist and I found three Vogue patterns that would be a good starting point: V1631, V1565, and V1579;
And then to mimic the gold knot dress, I found V1657 and the Eilidh Dress from Pipe Dream Patterns
Next the wrap dress that I didn’t really like at all when I tried it on but lots of viewers disagreed so I took some time to find a few patterns. I found the 1940s wrap dress and the Andersen Blouse from Sew Over It and, my favourite, the Myrna dress from Colette
Next up, the printed dress with waist ties. I thought it might be hard to find patterns similar to this and it might have been if I hadn’t had the wisdom of a viewer who pointed me in the direction of the Meridian Dress from Papercut Patterns. It’s a great style and it’s got the same tie detail that extend from the front darts too!
Now on to the REALLY fabulous dresses! I tried on a fabulous dress that I called a princess dress. It was gorgeous but tbh it would be made by the right fabric. The dress itself is a really simple shape but it needs the right fabric. This isn’t about fabric so this was the best pattern I could find in a quick search: V9373
And then of course there was the g o r g e o u s blue dress. I thought this might be tricky but actually I found lots of possibilities here: The Seamwork Myrtle dress for the cowl neckline; V1533; and my absolute favourite: V1635, it was just so similar to the original dress!!
Similar to the dark blue dress was V1600, although honestly I wasn’t really a fan of this dress on me:
And finally I got to the shirt dresses. Maybe a bit more down to earth but in the end probably closer to what I realistically (boooo reality!) would feel comfortable wearing as a wedding guest. Although I do have to stress that I was thinking very fancy fabric to make things a bit more special. So here are the shirt dresses that I considered:
That’s V9371; V9328; and from Colette Patterns: Penny, Hawthorn, and my favourite: Ceylon.
In the end I decided, what I probably knew all along, that I wasn’t going to find everything I wanted in one pattern and I decided to use www.tailornova.com to design my own pattern. Yes, that is possible! In my video I show how it all works and in my next video I’ll talk about how the making process went and show you the finished dress. Thanks for visiting!
Love Jo x
Love Jo
