Refashioning a wedding dress into a Christening gown.

I think this used to be a much more popular thing to do years ago, probably because wedding dresses were home-made more often and the fabric would have been quite a costly part of the finished article. I’ve made a couple of Christening gowns in the past (although sadly for complicated reasons not for my own girls) but this is the first time I can recall cutting up an existing dress for a refashion.

I got a message early one Sunday morning just two days after we got back from holiday recently asking if such a thing were possible and also I’d have less than three weeks to do it in! Fortunately the client was able to come the next day so we got cracking very quickly. She had an idea of what she had in mind so she showed me a photo and we went from there.

Although the dress was from five years earlier it hadn’t been cleaned so the skirt, and the hem in particular, was very soiled. I took the whole skirt off the bodice, and also the skirt lining, plus the embroidered lace appliqué panels which came off the bodice and skirt. I was able to wash the lining but I couldn’t risk washing the Duchesse satin of the dress so I had to separate the front skirt panel (which was asymmetric) from the backs and then work out where the straight grain was so that I could cut a new front skirt piece from the cleanest area. To work out where the grain is you can tell to some extent by pulling gently in each direction on the fabric. If there’s some degree of stretch (in a non-stretch fabric) then it probably means you’re not on the straight grain yet but if there’s little or no stretch then you’re probably pretty much on it. To double-check after doing this I cut along the edge of the piece on what I’d calculated to be the grain and then pulled a few loose threads away until eventually I could see exactly where the grain was. I could then place the pattern piece onto the fabric with a good degree of certainty.

As I never throw a pattern away I have a number of children’s patterns which I used when my own girls were small so I simply used bodice pieces from one of these. The client wanted an over-long skirt so I merely created a flared A-line shape to the length needed. She wanted small ruffles at the shoulders instead of sleeves and these are very simple to draft. I drew a line on the bias (a 45 degree angle) and then a curved line which measured approximately twice as long as the sleeve opening it was going into. The curved edge is the one which you then run your gathering stitches along to pull it up, the straight edge is the one which gets neatened, or in this case had new narrow lace added to it.

This pattern was from 1989!

The ruffles drawn directly onto the fabric at a 45 degree angle, the curved edge will be gathered and the straight edge gets neatened. The pieces don’t have to be on the bias but it gives the finished ruffle a nice fluidity.

I added new narrow lace to the edge of the ruffle.

After our initial discussions and sketches it wasn’t practical for the client to keep coming backwards and forwards constantly so we conducted the rest of our consultations via WhatsApp because it was a good way for me to send her photos of ideas for her approval.

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  I made several suggestions for decorating the bodice incorporating the embroidered lace pieces, and the rouleau loops which were from the lacing on the back of the original dress.
  
  

The appliqué was too much for the tiny bodice, the baby is only ten months old, so I tried it on the skirt instead.

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  the two pieces near the top…

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  both pieces near the bottom,

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  I separated a section to make 3 smaller ones which looked aesthetically much better.

I suggested that the appliqué should be towards the hem because then it would show better in photos if the baby was being cradled or sitting on a lap. Once we’d settled on the position the lace had to be sewn on by hand.

I wanted a deep hem on the skirt rather than a narrow rolled hem because a rolled hem would have had a tendency to curl up on this fabric and not look nice. Because of the curve of the hem I couldn’t just turn up a hem of 4cms because there would be too much bulk that would look very clunky and no possibility on this fabric of steaming it away. Because of these factors I opted to make some 8cms wide bias binding from the Duchesse which, after I’d joined it into suitable length strips, I folded in half lengthways and pressed. I placed the cut edges against the hem of the skirt and sewed it in position. Next I pushed the seam allowances towards the binding and understitched it about 1mm away from the seam.

The bias is pinned in position ready to sew close to the edge. I did the front and the back separately and then joined the side seams later.

This is how the hem eventually looked when I’d slip-hemmed it into position.

The finished hem looks like this on the right side.

It was a then a case of putting all the pieces together, along with fully lining the gown. We went with two rouleau strips across the front, which I secured into the side seams, along with the loops for the back which would tie into a simple bow. The skirt was gathered into the waist seam and an invisible zip inserted into the back. I finished the neck edge with a simple bias binding, to keep it very soft and simple around the baby’s neck.

One final detail the client had asked for was her baby’s name and the baptism date embroidered inside. Fortunately my Pfaff Quilt Ambition 2.0 has a range of script options so I did a couple of test runs. I stabilised a piece of the satin and then embroidered the words onto it. I added some more of the narrow lace around the edge and finally satin-stitched it inside the skirt lining. Maybe one day there will be other names alongside it, that would be nice to think.

I really enjoyed this project as it was so creative and was real contrast to most projects I undertake. The client was absolutely delighted, and not a little emotional, when she came to collect the gown. You have to put a lot of trust into a dressmaker, especially when you’re handing over a garment which is itself has precious memories. I’m looking forward to seeing photos of little Poppy in her gown eventually, I hope she doesn’t disgrace herself!

I decided with about 45 minutes before the client arrived to collect the gown that I needed to make a matching padded hanger covered in the satin and trimmed with leftover lace.

As you can see, I needed the washing line and Mr Y to help display the gown in the April sunshine. (I should have pressed that crease out before I photographed it!)

Designing by WhatsApp might be unorthodox and have its limitations but it worked a treat this time. Have you ever had to refashion a wedding dress into a Christening gown? Maybe you’ve done it yourself?

Until next time,

Happy Sewing

Sue

A leather jacket refashion

Oh my goodness, I’m not sure I would have started this if I’d known how tricky it was going to be!

I was asked by a neighbour if I’d consider refashioning a leather jacket she had had for a good number of years. She had worn and loved it a lot back in the day but it was now relegated to the back of the wardrobe, she neither wanted to wear it because it was too big and dated, nor did she want to throw/give it away so what to do?

Although I’ve done other radical refashions in the last couple of years they have been for myself so the pressure wasn’t there like this one. You can read about those here, here and here. I made it clear, in the nicest possible way, that I had no guarantee of the quality of end result with a leather jacket, once sewn the stitch marks were there permanently, anything cut off couldn’t be reattached. So long as she understood that there was an outside possibility that it wouldn’t go well and was able to accept that then I was prepared to have a go. I haven’t sewn leather since I did it as a module at college many years ago.

We started by assessing what the jacket looked like as it was and we agreed it was much too large for her and it looked over-long now. The sleeves were too roomy as well, the zigzag detail at the neck and shoulders I could do nothing about so that would have to stay. Because you can’t pin leather I bought some quilting clips to do the job instead. I undid the lining and clipped the side seams and sleeves inside so we could assess in front of a mirror what the effect looked like. We decided pretty quickly that the over-large shoulders had to go too. Because we had to make each decision before moving on to the next Etain had to keep coming by, luckily she only lives over the road from me.

the original jacket was below hip length with a horizontal seam and welt pockets.

I was kindly given a specific ‘leather’ foot by Pfaff Uk for my Quilt Ambition 2.0 and I bought some leather needles too. The foot is made from Teflon (that’s right, like non-stick pans) because it glides over the surface of the leather rather than ’sticking’ to it. If you don’t want to buy a special foot you could attach masking tape to the underside of a regular foot although I must stress I haven’t tried this personally so I can’t vouch for its success. I also used some Stitch-and-Tear Vilene which I’d got knocking about to put under the leather if it was directly again the teeth of the feed-dog underneath [this prevents them from scuffing and chewing up the surface of the leather]

I’m not going to lie, even though I have a wonderful machine which doesn’t usually struggle with multiple thicknesses, and I had the correct tools for the job, I found this a very tricky refashion because the machine hated going over too many layers of leather. The needle sewed smoothly over two layers but as soon as I went over more than that the needle would ‘stick’ and then clunk back out of the leather with such loud bangs that it frightened the life out of me every single time! I resorted to winding the balance wheel by hand every time I had to sew over seams or darts so that I had some control over it. I also had to adjust the top tension a lot in order to get a reasonable stitch quality, added to which there wasn’t a decent colour-match for the shade of pink I needed in the stronger thread from Gutermann. It’s possible that another brand had something available but, bearing in mind the trouble I was having with multiple layers, I wanted to avoid visible top-stitching at all costs and I didn’t want to order threads that might not be a good match anyway.

Onwards! I must confess that I kept pushing the jacket down the list because I wasn’t enjoying it and there were other projects to complete which were preferable….

I took off the lower portion of the jacket at the midriff seam, put darts into the front and pulled in the centre back seam to give the jacket more shaping. The sleeves came in by quite a bit although, in the end, we retained the modest shoulder pads to give some structure. Unfortunately one of the side effects of bringing the sleeves in caused the shoulders to raise up slightly in wear but anchoring down the collar to make it appear narrower distracted from this to some extent.

with the lower section removed, before the darts were added.

To give the jacket some definition again at the bottom I took leather from the original lower section, made a much narrower band and reattached it to the bottom. This looked ok and by pressing this seam open I could fold the band up and stitch it through the seam allowance thus keeping it in position. I was also able to bag out the corners at the front thankfully, the last bit of reattaching of the new band to the button-stand had to be done by hand through the seam. It’s not completely invisible but it’s perfectly acceptable. I reattached the lining to the seam allowance of the new lower band, I was partly able to do this on the machine and then sewed up the remaining gap by hand.

with the new band stitched in position and clipped to hold it. The collar is now anchored down to make it appear narrower.

I’ve made a tiny stitch through the neck seam and caught the reverse side of the collar stitching to hold it down.

Inside the new band, it’s not the tidiest but I had to stitch by hand through the seam and then catch down the lining to the leather too.

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I gave the fold of the band a good press, with a cloth over it naturally, to flatten it as much as possible. the final touch was to change the buttons for something newer than the slightly scuffed covered buttons of the original.

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Finished, I do hope she’s happy with it.

The centre back seam was taken in by about 2cms at the bottom too, to give a bit more definition.

So there we have it, it was a challenge but Etain is happy with it and it looks a good deal more fashionable, at least for now! Leather isn’t difficult to sew as such but there are definitely challenges, I didn’t follow all the rules like glueing seams flat but when you’re dealing with an already-made garment some of those things go out of the window a bit. Please don’t think I’m now an expert in this field but if there’s anything you want to know about how I tackled things then do message me and I’ll try to answer. Meanwhile, I think I’ll find a simpler project next….

Happy sewing

Sue