Rachel's Bridesmaid Dress

Last month a friend of mine was having serious difficulties finding a decent bridesmaid dress for her 13 year old daughter. You know the situation, either the bust fits and the hips don't, or the waist is great but the bust gapes. I think most of us experience some sort of problem when trying to buy a garment - be it a dress, trousers or a blouse. But I think teens even more so. They're in that transition stage where they don't want to look too young or girlie, but on the other hand they don't want to look too old. Also a lot of the bridesmaid dresses in the stores can be rather low at the front and this was also one of the problems my friend faced while shopping with her daughter.

So my friend Mary asked me (8 weeks before the wedding ahhh!!) if I could design and make a simple bridesmaid dress for her daughter. We worked together to come up with a simple A-line shaped dress with matching hair band. Rachel had two fittings (one of which was done over Skype, and the other was over the phone while Mary was in France!). This was quite a challenge but we managed to work through our distance issues with modern technology!





The skirt part of the dress was developed from the Libby skirt. It also has a thick band detail at the waist and a shallow sweetheart neck. The fabric is a brilliant jade stretch cotton sateen from C&H fabrics in Canterbury. Improvements: in hindsight I think I would have made the sweetheart shallower. I think a straighter neckline suits a dress that requires a higher neckline. But all in all i'm really happy with the dress and Rachel looks wonderful!