We’re heading to the USA very soon (via Fiji) to attend our nephew’s wedding in Colorado.  Which means that I needed to do some wedding guest sewing! The dress code is formal (suits, gowns, cocktail dresses).  We bought Dan a new suit from our favourite menswear retailer (it had been a long time between suits) and the girls and I went shopping to see if there were any styles that we fancied.  Stella decided that she wanted to wear a suit, but with a pretty top underneath.  I’ve been travelling for work quite a lot this year, and knew that it wasn’t really viable for me to sew her a suit with all the fitting that might entail. We found her one at Forever New, and I found the Vikisews Tally bustier top pattern.

I wasn’t going to cut into ‘good’ fabric until I’d worked out any fitting tweaks. I bought the smallest size pattern (US2/UK6 – Stella is an Australian women’s size 4 in the shops) and printed the shortest height range.  Although Stella is around 160cm tall she’s a little short-waisted so I figured that would work best in this style.  I found some mid/heavy weight poly satin in stash and decided to use that for the hopefully wearable muslin.

There was no way that I was going to make the bias strips to topstich over the seamlines as per the pattern – not in this poly satin! But they’d be great in something lighter weight or something like a linen.

I still needed to take up the shoulders a little, and decided to bring in the centre front panel a smidge at the neckline.

The fancy plastic separating zipper that I used at the back was found at Jimmy Buttons. It’s a fraction too long for purpose, but I managed to fudge it adequately enough. So, the finished bustier? It’s a success!

She’s been wearing it both as a top on it’s own and styled over a white shirt. Hooray!

So you ask, why couldn’t she wear this top with the suit? Well, the suit is dark green and the blue/teal satin doesn’t go with it at all. We auditioned many fabrics as potential options for the ‘real’ top, and ended up with a brocade from The Cloth Shop. Which happened to be left over from MY wedding guest dress. Yes, Stella and I are going to match!

I made the same alterations to this top as I did to the satin one, only to discover that the armholes were now a fraction too high! Good thing I had her try it on before I lined it; I was able to re-sew the shoulder seams to have the tiniest seam allowance possible, and that fixed it.  Phew! This zipper also came from Jimmy Buttons, but because it was a metal zipper I was able to shorten it to the correct length. There is a good video tutorial on shortening a metal zipper for the back of a bustier here – starting at 7:53min.

I don’t have any modelled photos of this bustier on Stella to share with you, but here’s the outfit!

Don’t worry, I’ll spam you all with modelled photos from the wedding!  I’ll blog my wedding guest dress soon, and Clare’s just needs a few tweaks and the hem done.  We leave in less than a week!