We’ve an invitation to a wedding at the end of May, so of course a new outfit had to be made! The wedding was one of many which were postponed twice due to the pandemic, it was meant to be in May 2020, I had duly bought a pattern and some fabric. The pattern was a vintage style dress and duster coat, Simplicity 8731. Unfortunately whereas two years ago I was on the cusp of pattern size 14, now I am definitely over it so the size range I’d bought of 6-14 just wasn’t going to work for a fairly fitted bodice. A rethink was required…

I had a rummage through my pattern stash and one jumped out, the Orchidee dress by Deer and Doe. I had sufficient fabric so it was sorted.

I really enjoyed making this dress, it’s taken a while but sometimes it’s nice to just take your time and enjoy the process. I love the details on it and it went together beautifully.

The fabric is like a pima or tana lawn, I’m not sure where I bought it now, it feels gorgeous and sews like a dream. The dress is lined, I just lined the bodice and left the skirt as a single layer. As it’s a fine cotton dress I didn’t want to line it with synthetic lining fabric, I had a look in my stash and found a short length of ivory cotton lawn. I suspect it’s some of the fabric from the pound fabric shop in Dewsbury, he reckoned it was Liberty lawn and it certainly feels like it. It was perfect to line the dress with.

When I cut it out I didn’t take much notice of fabric pattern matching, I didn’t really have enough to faff about with that, so I was very surprised when the front bodice matched perfectly!! I don’t think I would have got such a good match if I tried! I wished I’d pattern matched the waistband after that…

As you can see the bodice has ‘bridal loop buttons’, I ordered some rat tail cord as suggested and fortunately the colour matched beautifully. The instructions were a little confusing for this bit but the nice people at Deer and Doe have put a helpful video together. The instructions were to pin the rat tail in place and then stitch over. However I found it moved too much under the foot, so I hand sewed them in place and then machine stitched down the front edge, that seemed to work well.

The buttons are little pearl bead-like buttons, I had them in my stash and they worked perfectly.

I French-seamed all the main seams and hand stitched the hem up. I love it, it feels lovely to wear. The only bit I’m not 100% on is the puffy sleeves, they also looked nice as fluttery sleeves before I put the elastic in. My daughter thinks they look fine but I’m still tempted to try fluttery…

…and luckily I have pink shoes, handbag and hat to match!