Hen's night in Blue

One beautiful wedding and a relaxing two week honeymoon in Hawaii later, I am back in Melbourne and ready to sew! One of the first things I did after hobbling, jet-lagged and snotty (I have a cold dammit!) into my house, was walk into my sewing room and sit amongst my piles (mountains) of fabric. It's good to be home!

Now I may not have blogged in the frantic weeks before the wedding, but I was not idle; Janome and I were busy. Ok maybe sewing clothes when I was up to my eye-balls in last minute wedding plans was not the smartest, but I actually found it relaxed me and gave me a bit of Julia time.

So here is one of the three dresses that I made right before the wedding; the dress I wore to my hen's night, or Bachelorette night as it's known in some parts!

This dress was put together using a metre of some sort of polyester fabric that I had in my stash right from when I had first started sewing. One of my very first projects was made using this fabric, and unfortunately it bombed. I had kept the left over fabric from it hoping that I could use it for another outfit one day as I really loved the print.

I lined the dress with black silk dupion to give it extra firmness and to stop my 'jelly' from jiggling too much. God was eating pears when he made me.

If you're feeling a bit of deja vu you're not wrong! I used the same silhouette for this dress as I used for my Tessuti Awards creation, just minus the pleats. Don't you love how different two dresses can look just by using a different fabric and adding a subtle feature!

The feature for this dress was a wave of folds on one shoulder, which gives the dress just that little bit extra and hopefully pulls it out of the boring category. This feature was made from one long piece of fabric. I made large folds in random spots at different angles, starting from the bottom all the way to the top, and then stitched the folds down.

My fabulous and incredibly generous bridesmaids spoilt me rotten on my hen's night and I had an absolute ball! We had a high tea with friends in the afternoon (my new favourite thing!) and then hit the d-floor late in the evening/morning where things got a bit messy (in a good way). I'm a very lucky girl to have such good friends!

Here's me wearing the dress on the hen's night, complete with veil, oversized flashing-light engagement ring (naturally) Bride-to-be sash, flowers and a photo of my fiance (now husband) dressed as woman around my neck. Look out!