the bridesmaid dress journey

My wonderful friend Eden will be getting married this June and had asked me to be one of her brides maids! I'm so excited for her and can't wait for the wedding. However there are a few things that need to be done first. I've never been a bridesmaid before, although this probably isn't going to be the typical 'American' bridesmaid experience like we see on tv. The first difference is all the bridesmaids aren't wearing the same dress. Eden sent us a cord of color and said to get a long dress as close to this color as possible. So of course I decide making my dress would be the better option.

The first thing I did was look around for a pattern that I would like. And I came across this simplicity pattern 2442. I really liked the neckline and I figured I could just make a few adjustments elsewhere. Since I am horrible about adjusting a pattern to fit me while it is still in pattern state I decided the best course of action would be to make the dress out of fabric I had lying around first, then adjust the pattern and then finally make it out of the blue fabric for the wedding.

The pattern is a tad complicated where the majority of the time is spent in constructing the bodice of the dress. It has a complete lining and there are about 3 layers of fabric on the waist. I made a few minor changes to the pattern initially such as adding ties to the waist to create a belt and getting rid of the ruching around the back of the dress.

The hardest alteration I will need to do is in the bust area. I was reading online that the majority of patterns are built with a B sized bra cup in mind and unfortunately I am not a B cup so anything fitted around the bust will need to be enlarged quite a bit. I have yet to discover exactly how to do this without changing other dimensions such as the length in the arm hole and length of the waist. What I'm thinking now is cutting along the points of the pleats in the pattern and just lengthening there so the darts end up larger.

For the most part I do like the finished product Although I may make the skirt a bit wider just to make the entire thing a bit more summery as well as lower the neckline in the back(this will also make it easier to dress myself since it took me about 3 minutes to zip the dress the first time and about 10 min to unzip it.