I wanted to make something special to wear to my friend’s rehearsal dinner.
Instead of traveling elsewhere for fine fabric(s) and spending money, I tried to find a fabric to use from my fabric stash.
After searching for something simple and classic, I found some beige silks I bought from Mood Fabrics in NYC last year. I originally intended to use the beige silk for a gown. But after using some of the silk for the mother of the bride dress, I didn’t have enough left for a gown. Instead, I decided to use the silk for a skirt and blouse/tank.
Just before the wedding, I received the new Burda Style magazine. The recent edition featured guest Italian designer Alessia Giacobino (designer for
The silk I used for the skirt looks very similar to the silk worn on the Burda model in the Burda magazine.
I didn’t have much time to make the garments (nor did I want to spend a lot of time on the garments), but I ended up spending more time than I anticipated. The silk for the skirt was very slippery and fine. I ended up hand stitching the hem and flounce.
If you look closely in the photo, the flounce (ruffle piece draped in front) has serged edges. Originally I serged the edges of my flounce, but at the last-minute I didn’t like how the serging looked. My serged edges didn’t look finished and clean.
Therefore, I ended up rolling the hem and hand stitching the flounce edges. Since I stitched the flounce edges after building the garment, the edges weren’t as clean as they would’ve been.
Custom Silk Blouse
I used a Burda dress pattern for my simple silk tank (pattern pictured above). I cut off the lower half of this dress.
I have a couple of finished Ukrainian embroidery pieces around my studio. Originally I hand stitched one of the Ukrainian embroidery pieces to my blouse. Ultimately I felt that the linen fabric of the embroidery piece didn’t go with the silk, so I seam ripped off the piece. (The embroidery made the outfit look homemade.)
Since I seam ripped off the embroidery, I had a lot of beige on. So I ended up wearing very bright and colorful chunky jewelry for the rehearsal dinner!
Overall, I was happy with the outfit!