M6030 Part 1 -- Picking the Dress

With the start of May, I'm going to begin a series on sewing the M6030 wedding gown as a bridesmaid dress.  It took some looking for a dress with as few pieces as possible because this dress was going to need to be size up quite a ways.  The skirt was not going to be a big deal, but fitting the bodice to fit a girl with measurements beyond any plus size measurements available, this wasn't going to be an easy feat, but it was surely going to be as fun as usual!  So we did a lot of looking at patterns.

The first consideration was the bride's dress.  It would be easy to pick a beautiful dress and put it together for a special occasion, but we had a bride to consider.  It was important not to over shadow her choice with our choice.  The bride had specified a color: a maroon more on the blue side than red and given all the bridesmaids a swatch of the fabric.  The bridesmaids could wear whatever they wanted.  To complicate things, the bride is extremely petite in height, but not so much in width. *wink*  Her dress looked very much like this M5321 example.

M5321 -- McCall's Stock Photo

M6030 Stock Photo

After much deliberation, we chose M6030.  The gathered sleeves, and  and straight skirt would be easy to alter.  The tough part proved to be the bodice as it had something like five pieces and connected to the sleeves in a unique way.  We did a lot of fittings for the bodice and I took a lot of measurements which I will talk about in Part 3.

The biggest thing I have discovered in a lot of looking at reviews and reading about other projects that have succeeded and failed, is the compulsion to go their own way.  I think I've stated this in other posts, but there's a reason why I'm not a pattern designer.  I really don't know what's best for the pattern.  I haven't always wanted to do what they ask for, but  I try to stick to the instructions and learn something along the way.

This was a very fun dress to sew.  I was please with the finished product and so was the bridesmaid.  I sewed the dress without expecting to get paid, but received two restaurant gift cards in the mail from her parents, so I imagine the dress was well received.

Next week: choosing fabric and starting to study the instructions.