Que Sarah, Sarah.

The idea: A day to evening dress that my friend Sarah can team with flats or heels to wear to any one of the many celebrations planned as she bids a fond farewell to her twenties. Just to make it clear, Sarah is going to be thirty. THIRTY.

The inspiration:

Koi Suwannaga

te Stang dress £929
Garden and Cosmos: The Royal Paintings of Jodhpur Exhibition at British Museum

Chartreuse silk Alexa print dress from Monsoon £75

Notes: I actually can’t remember the last time I saw Sarah (one of my oldest friends) in a dress, unless jeans and a vest count as a dress, which they don’t. Sarah doesn’t tend to go for short dresses and as far as I’m concerned, when it comes to this style, the shorter the better. (Although look at Helena Christensen in a poppy print silk day dress in July’s Vogue for knee-length sexy).

Dressmaking Diary: I've found the most perfect fabric in John Lewis. It's £24 per metre and really fits with the look that I'm trying to achieve. It's more expensive than the material that I have so far been using but it is for a special occasion so I will just have to be extra careful and not just cut and hope like I usually do. In terms of the lining, I deliberated over a fuchsia pink or a dark blue. If it was for me, I would have gone for pink to pick out that hint of colour in the fabric, but Sarah really isn’t a pink person, plus she’s got amazingly blue eyes so in the end there wasn’t really a choice to be made. It's satin and is £10 per metre again from John Lewis.

I'm not using a pattern but a past season French Connection dress of mine as a rough template. Sarah tried this dress on and she said that she would prefer for it to be more fitted. Because I want the dress to appear as seamless as possible, all the workmanship and structure will go into the lining, in order that it hangs over the body perfectly but all of the work is busily going on behind the scenes.

With the lining finished and fitted it's just a case of cutting the outer fabric to size in order that it shouldn't require darts, which actually isn’t as easy as it sounds since the fabric is very sheer, frays like a bugger and slides all over the place. I ignored my mother’s advice of always putting the zip in first so as a result I’ve got a bit of excess fabric that needs addressing in the touch-up stage. Grrr.

I have ruched the sleeves and made them shorter than I originally intended after my boyfriend remarked “I don’t think I’ve ever seen Sarah wear sleeves”. As I dismissed his comment as utter rubbish I reached for the scissors and hacked away…

I’m making the next bit more awkward than it actually needs to be: the length. Sarah never wears super-mini dresses but I can’t stop myself rolling up the hemline and commenting on how much better it looks. Plus it would look great with a pair of black tights….Must remember that this is not for me so I’m letting the hemline down by an inch, or maybe half an inch. Let’s not be rash. Periodically in times of recession hemlines head north – it stands to reason, the less fabric there is the less costs involved but since I’ve already bought the fabric, and plenty of it come to that, credit crunching is admittedly a weak argument. Let Sarah have the length, then before we go out, once I’ve plied her with booze, she’ll make a gin-induced declaration that

maybe it could do with being a touch shorter, and I’ll whip out my needle and thread and she’ll have a bum skimming hemline before she can say “you didn’t put any tonic in my G&T, hic.”

I have just finished overlocking all the seams and I’m thrilled with the result (an over lock machine stitches around the edges of raw seams for a tidier finish).

Lessons learned:
1. Perhaps overlock the lining seams before the outer fabric is sewn on.

2. Always put the zip in first.
3. Overlockers have replaced the wheel in terms of man’s best invention.

Total cost (not including labour): £46