The lovely and talented sewist Leila, based in the UK, is our latest guest maker to hack a CocoWawa pattern! She chose the very first design I launched in 2016, the Marshmallow Dress, also available as a mini version for kids age 3 to 12. She shares all the details of her gorgeous make below.
Ganni inspired Marshmallow Dress
Follow all the steps for this hack here
1. I took my current pregnancy bust measurement and cut out a size 5. Before pregnancy, I’d have chosen a size 3 but I wanted to make sure I had room to grow for post partum too (everyone keeps warning me your boobs get way bigger!).
2. I knew that a dress with no front opening would be a no-no for breastfeeding so I switched the back placket to the front which was super easy. I literally just tracked the front piece and added the placket from the back and omitted the placket on the back piece so I could cut on the fold.
3. When I found this seersucker from Fabric Godmother it just screamed Ganni to me. I haven’t made a Ganni dupe but I know everyone loves them so I thought I’d take inspiration from some of their dresses and add a bigger frilled collar.
To do that I traced the original Peter Pan collar piece that comes with the pattern and then drafted a larger collar. I had to try a few different shapes to get it right but in the end I attached a piece of muslin to my dress and drew it straight on.
I also added a ruffle edge, which was one long piece of fabric, sewed into a half tube, with one long edge open and gathered.Then I sandwiched it between the two collar pieces and sew it together being careful on the corner edges as they can be a bit fiddly. I finished the inside off with bias binding made from the same fabric.
4. The rest of the dress is the same. The gathered frill at the bottom gives me tons of light airy room and I’m hoping that it’ll still look fun and oversized without a belly in the summer, but will also be a great feel good outfit for while I’m slowly allowing my body to find its new shape.
5. To finish, I picked some small pinky pearl buttons to compliment the colour of the fabric.
Thank you so much Leila for your amazing work. The dress is absolutely stunning and I hope it will get a lot of used during your pregnancy and when your beautiful baby arrives :)
And that's it for this post! Thank you everyone for reading and I will see you here again very soon.
Ana
xxx
FIND INSPIRATION FOR SPRING AND SUMMER
MORE HACKS FROM AMAZING MAKERS