This is the second dress I made for the Royal Wedding Sewalong – I couldn’t stop at just one Royal Wedding dress, a girl has to have options if she is going to meet the queen 😉

See my first dress here. 

This one is made from another stretch sateen from Stylemaker Fabrics. I have been looking for this fabric for months. Ever since I saw this dress on Pinterest…

Once I found the fabric on Stylemaker I knew that I could make this dress happen. What followed was a fair bit of pattern hacking. I knew that I wanted to use a current McCalls/Simplicity/Butterick pattern so that I could enter the Royal Wedding contest, but I had no idea which one. It wasn’t until someone in the Curvy Sewing Collective facebook group mentioned using a sloper that a lightbulb went off.

I ended up using Butterick 5627 as my base. Slopers don’t have any ease by design. They are meant to help you know which pattern adjustments you need to make for that company’s patterns. This meant that I needed to add ease – the only question was where?!

I consulted the Joan Dress pattern by Sew Over It and my new favorite Simplicity 2444 pattern to see where ease should be added and ended up with the most well-fitting dress I have ever made!

I added a shoulder bow to mimic the inspiration image by sewing rectangles of fabric together and then looping another piece around them. The bow is detachable in case I ever wanted to wear the dress without it.

The dress is lined with a lightweight stretch cotton, just like the poppy print dress. Lining with a lighter weight material was the right call for this dress, since the fabric is already fairly thick and this is such a close fitting dress.

I’m pretty pleased with my finished dress! I know that I will find lots of opportunities to wear it this summer, even if my invite to Harry and Meghan’s wedding did get lost in the mail 😉