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Custom Wedding Dress & Kimono Upcycled Clothes | オーダーメイドウェディングドレス&着物ドレス

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Tutorial | How to Make a Cotton Sack Dress

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Tutorial | How to Make a Cotton Sack Dress

I love working on custom orders. Custom orders are a lot of work since it often requires me to make something out of patterns I don’t have, but give me fun challenges. It is an opportunity to expand different variations and patterns of work.

I was recently asked to make a modification of this dress. Her request was to keep the big front buttons, add rolled up sleeves, and big pockets. Before I made one for her, I made one sample to make sure the patterns work. It turned out the dress was pretty simple to make. The dress can be adjusted to fit different sizes easily.
Although I added darts for the previous dress, this custom order dress has none. It is all straight line sewing.

You need measurements of your:
♥ shoulder to shoulder measurement (16″ for me)
♥ from your shoulder to the top of the bust measurement (mine was 9″)
♥ desired length of the dress (in this case, I made it for 34″)

Material:
♥ About 1.50m of fabric
♥ covered button kit
♥ invisible zipper

Pattern:
1. Top panels
♥ Take your shoulder to shoulder measurement (mine is about 16″), and add 3″ each side. So the total width of the top front panel is about 23″.
♥ The length of your top front panel is the measurement of your shoulder to the top of your bust.
♥ Now your have a rectangle fabric, 23″ ×9″. Cut two (one for front, and one for back)
♥ Adjust the neckline, you can make it like boat neck, or round neck.

2. Skirt panels
♥ Take the length of your shoulder to shoulder measurement (16″), and multiply it by 1.5. In my case, this is 24″. This becomes the width of your skirt panels, front and back.
♥ The length of your skirt panels should be (your desired length of the dress) – (length of your top panel). In this case, 34-9=25.
♥ Now you have a rectangle fabric, 24″ ×25″.
♥ Gather the top of this skirt panel fabric, and shorten it (gather) so it becomes your shoulder to shoulder measurement (16″). Then sew this into the top panel, leave 3″ both sides for the sleeve.

3. Pockets, roll up sleeves etc.
This is your preference. Make many different variations!

4. Zipper should be added to the back middle, and I would cut the back top and skirt panels 0.5″ longer so it has extra seem allowance for installing zipper.

Please link to this post if you make a dress from this tutorial. Happy sewing♥

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Mom’s closet

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Before the craziness of Christmas and Holiday had started, I had a chance to sneak into my mother’s room to go through her closet. I just wanted to borrow some interfacing, but ended up finding more fun stuff than that in her closet. A few of them are the old patterns above. They look like they are from the early 90’s or something.

The one on the left is a blouse pattern with cute sleeves. I’m not a big blouse person, and I don’t wear them except I wear a suit, but I really like the sleeves and the sash around the waist. When I get a chance, I want to make one for myself and pair it with shorts or something in the summer.

My mother called the pattern on the right “pregnant dress”, and I think it’s perfect! Perhaps I will make one for my best friend, who is now 6 month pregnant.

I also found these fabrics along with the patterns. Mint green hound tooth print and brown polka dot! These are something that I would not be the first one to buy at the fabric shop (since I always go for florals), it’s good, gives me some varieties. I only had a little over 1 meter of them, so I decided to make the following clothes…

♡Mint chocolate chip skirt♡
I used the same pattern as this leopard skirt I made for Tokyo Made Market.
I like this pattern since it only needs 1 meter to make, and I love pockets.
♡Polka dot dolly dress♡

Same pattern as this dress I made before. Just omitted the pockets. Since this fabric does not have stretch, I cut back in half and added an invisible zipper for a closure.
Both my husband and my sister tells me either I look like a nun or a little child with this dress. But I’m fully satisfied with the result, and most of all, happy to be able to use the fabric that had been sleeping in my mom’s closet for more than 10 years!

Done!

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I’m done! I’m all done with making clothes for Tokyo Made Market. yay!
Sorry for the not-so-exciting background of the photos… I wanted to get a photographer and shoot mood shots of the collection with my sister as a model, but I just ran out of time. Besides, my sister was being a bit uncooperative, so I just had to do it myself. So today I had to run around the house and the back yard trying to get these photos taken before sunset. I feel like the sun goes down so quickly, and by little after 4pm, it already looks like midnight.

Do you see that I cheated a bit though? I did not make all 9, I only made 8.. the bubble sleeve cardigan was borrowed from my etsy shop.. but I just thought it goes well with the rest of the clothes, color wise.

My favorite is the top right corner, two-tone dress with criss cross detail in the front. I would have worn it to work everyday if I still work at the office! My second favorite is the middle in the second row, high waisted skirt. It is quite comfortable and warm, since this thick fabric has some stretch.

These will be available at Tokyo Made Market, and they are all one of a kind!