My cousin was a beautiful bride earlier this year, and a few months before her wedding her mom (my aunt) asked me to turn her wedding dress into a gift for her daughter. She gave me free reign to make whatever I wanted, but I immediately knew the dress was meant to become: a lounge set! I conveniently already had a Vogue pattern set that worked perfectly…with a few tweaks! I knew that this was something she could wear (if she wanted) to get ready on her wedding day and hopefully to use in everyday life as well!
Note: I’m not going to give step-by-step sewing instructions as I just followed the instructions on the Vogue pattern. It is an easy pattern and great for any level of sewer. My goal is to describe how I used the dress to make the lounge set as inspiration for others to do something similar! When I deviate from the instructions, I will detail that below.
The dress is a gorgeous ivory satin with a fitted bodice embroidered and beaded in a floral pattern, a moderately flared skirt with a luxurious train, and lightly puffed sleeves. The inner layers are tulle, meaning I would only be able to use the outer layer to make the lounge set. To conserve fabric, I chose the shorter versions of the patterns: the camisole, shorts, and the petite sizing for the robe. However, if you have a dress with multiple layers of fabric, you might be able to make the longer versions of these patterns.
To start, I traced out the pattern in my cousin’s measurements onto some blank tracing paper. If you’re making this for yourself then you could cut out the pattern directly, but as I intend to use this for myself and for others in the future, this step was necessary.
I also strategized what parts of the dress would be used for each pattern piece so that I wouldn’t get in a bind when cutting them out of the fabric. My plan was as follows:
Robe - Back of the dress (including the decorative bows) & sleeves
Camisole - Bodice of the dress
Shorts - Bottom of the front of the dress
Now it’s time to get to work!
Shorts
I first made the shorts. Since I knew I would be using the back of the dress and train for the robe, I used the front of the dress for the shorts. I laid out the pattern so the bottom of the shorts would be the decorative hemline. This fulfilled a twofold purpose of having a cute hem with the lacy flower detail and also letting me skip a step of having to sew a hem - which we love! To make things simple I gave them an elastic waistband although you could also do a pretty satin drawstring in a complementing color.
Camisole
Next was the camisole. I originally intended to use the Vogue pattern but I actually did not follow the pattern at all for this as I will explain. I first removed each sleeve from the dress by carefully using a seam ripper so that all parts would remain intact. I then removed the lace with the buttons that goes across the upper part of the back. Once those pieces were off, I was able to see that I could actually keep the bodice as is and that it would look like a corset-style camisole. This would be a little fancier than I had imagined, but being able to keep the bodice as it was originally on the dress was an extra bonus. And the fact that the bodice matched my cousin’s measurements was kismet. The only thing that needed to be done was the hem.
Because of how the dress was constructed with the tulle layer underneath, I wasn’t able to just remove it with a seam ripper. Instead I cut 2” below the bodice all the way around. I then turned up the hem so that the raw edges were tucked away on the inside of the bodice. There were already stitches just above the lace trim, so I was able to stitch on top of those so that the new hem seam was hidden.
The last step for the bodice was to hem the arm hole edges from where I had taken off the sleeves.
Since the zipper on the dress ended at the end of the bodice, I was able to leave that as is so I didn’t have to do anything else with closures.
Robe
Lastly: the robe. As aforementioned, I did shorten the robe to ensure I had enough fabric. The pattern has a petite version already marked on it, so when I was tracing out the pattern I simply used the petite hem marking for the bottom of the robe. The pattern for the robe has the back piece cut on the fold so I was able to use the train of the dress for it, with the center back being the original center back that has the bows running down it. Following my trick with the shorts, I was able to position the pattern with the hem on the original hem of the dress.
For the front two pieces, I had enough material that I was also able to position them at the bottom of the dress to use the original hem.
I again deviated from the original pattern as I did not use interfacing for the neckline pieces. I chose not to do this as I felt it made the satin too stiff and uncomfortable around the back of the neck. Omitting this step wasn’t detrimental to the finished robe.
The sleeves. The sleeves were slightly puffy at the shoulders on the original dress. However, once the gathers were removed when I seam ripped them from the bodice I was able to also remove the tulle that further contributed to the puffiness of the sleeves. Then they were able to be sewn into a modern style. That’s no hate on puffy sleeves but that’s just not the vibe I was going for with this set!
I seam ripped the arm seam so that I would be able to pin it correctly to the armscye. I also decided that since the robe wasn’t full length it would look more cohesive for the sleeves to be shorter as well. So I cut and hemmed them to where it would lay at the elbow and I was able to keep all of the beautiful embroidery on them. The shoulders of the sleeves amazingly fit perfectly into the robe armscye so I didn’t have to do any finagling with that, and all I had to do was sew that up and re-sew the arm seam!
Finishing touch - the belt. I didn’t have enough fabric left over for the entirety of the belt. But I had some ivory lace that I used instead! I felt like this also gave some interest to the middle of the robe as there isn’t any decoration in that area.
And just like that, a wedding dress was repurposed into a new lounge set! I really enjoyed this project and all of the details on the dress made it turn out so beautifully. My cousin did wear the robe for getting ready on her wedding day and I think that was so special since it was from her mom’s dress. I think this would also be a great project to repurpose wedding dresses that I see at antique and vintage stores since they need some love as well. I hope this inspires you to get creative to give new life to old dresses!
Comments