My sister asked me to make her wedding lehenga and I didn’t want to say yes. Actually, I did tell her that it would not be a good idea. Having gone through a wedding of my own, I knew how important the dress is. And I didn’t want to disappoint if my sewing skills lacked what she needed. Come join me in how I ended up making MY best make ever and the ups and downs along the way.
Quick links to different sections in this post:
Promptly after my sister, Ragyi, got engaged, she asked if I could make her wedding lehenga. She assured me that she didn’t want anything too fancy, something without all the bead work most lehenga come with. So I reluctantly agreed, reluctant because I was scared of messing up. It is an important dress after all.
What’s a Lehenga?
A lehenga is an Indian outfit that is comprised of three items – lehenga (skirt), choli/blouse (top), and dupatta (stole). Here are some examples of lehengas.
I created some slides in my Instagram stories on the history of lehengas, if you would like to see it click here. (Note, I misspelled the word lehenga in the slides, I was spelling it how I say it. Of course there is no real way to spell it using the English alphabet – but lehenga is the popular way of spelling).
Brainstorming
We browsed a few shops to figure out what kind of silhouette Ragyi wanted. She decided on a full circle skirt and a princess seam blouse, with sleeves.
Here’s what she gave me as inspiration. She wanted a bold red fabric. Not heavy on the embellishments like the usual bridal wear. But have a prominent border on the blouse, sleeves, and lehenga. She wanted to be able to wear it again, perhaps even separately. And a deep back neck with tassels.
The pattern
Sew Over It has a lovely princess seam bodice pattern the Elise Dress. But this dress was sleeveless. So I also bought the Betty Dress add on to add sleeves. Before I purchased the pattern, I emailed the folks at Sew Over It to see how hard it would be to interchange the sleeves from two patterns, since the Betty doesn’t have princess seams.
The lady, Nicole, that replied, was very helpful and even drew up diagrams of how to transpose the sleeves from the Betty to the Elise. It’s a long email, so I’ll leave it at the end of this post, you can click here to jump to it.
The Fabric
When Ragyi was in India, she found this gorgeous raw silk in a deep red.
Yardage for the fabric was roughly calculated prior to the trip, based on her measurements. She also got lining fabric and trims for the borders.
Once we started laying out the trims, Ragyi wasn’t feeling how they were looking. Unfortunately, there aren’t physical stores dedicated to Indian trims/fabric here in the US. Ragyi found a shop on Etsy that had trims she liked and we spent at least 3 hours using photoshop to decide what combination looked the best before purchasing. The trims shop we used is Lilly Mittal Fashions. Highly recommend!
After finalizing the layout, I calculated yardage using geometry (circumference = 2(pi)r) and then added another yard for a conservative estimate.
Fitting the Blouse
We did five different fittings before cutting into the real fabric. Did I tell you I was nervous?!
When you first make a pattern, ESPECIALLY, if it is fitted – you’ll need toiles or muslins. Essentially test garments. If you can, I recommend making paper adjustments that you would normally make for yourself. However, this was my first time sewing a fitted garment for my sister so I went with straight sizes and no initial adjustments.
A few things that we were doing different from the pattern:
- Back zipper went downward instead of up, to accommodate neckline trim.
- Pattern is for a dress – we made a cropped bodice so bottom would be turned up.
- Sleeve length was based on where Ragyi wanted the sleeve to end.
First fitting everything was gaping and it was generally too big along with needing a swayback adjustment. It was okay though. It gave me some understanding on how to move forward.
Each toile I made got better and better. It was just super hard because of Covid and me not being able to meet her in person. I would either drop off the toile or she would pick it up and then we would video chat for 30 minutes later that day to figure out what adjustments needed to be made.
The biggest hurdle was the sleeves. It would fit but then Ragyi couldn’t raise her arm. I think my brother jokingly told her, she didn’t need to raise her arms. ðĪĢ The solution was to move the shoulder seam to sit higher up the shoulder, not by much, mind you, but it made a huge difference. We determined this by looking at a blouse she wore in the past, and realized the shoulder was much more narrow on the old one.
So after 3 toiles – you would think the real thing would fit perfectly. Nope! I wanted to cry. It was too tight everywhere. I couldn’t even zip up the bodice!
I took everything back home and threw it in time out. I know there was a deadline but I was so frustrated that I couldn’t bear to work on it immediately. It sat in time out for a few days – all the while, my brain was trying to process what happened, and what I needed to do. I even reached out to an Instagram friend, Rebecca Watson, who does couture for a living and she assured me that these things happen even after taking careful measurements.
Time out over, I took the blouse apart – the back had to be recut to be wider. The front had to be taken out as well, but I had enough seam allowance to do that without recutting. Thankfully, I was very careful in my initial cutting, cutting out of scraps when I could that I had plenty left to recut the back. This time, I added extra fabric to the back so that I could mark where to add the zipper.
By this time, the trims had arrived, we did another video chat to determine the final layout of the trims now that we had a blouse and skirt piece to drape over. I used my kid size mannequin to pin in place the trims. My sewing studio had seen better days!
When the blouse was finished with the fitting, I sewed the trims on top. Slightly troublesome with the curves along the neckline but it worked out.
Read Part 2 here
email from Sew Over It
Hi Anjori, I’d recommend tracing off your pattern pieces for this, just as you’ll end up with quite a frankenstein pattern and it’ll be easier to adapt! What you’ll need to do is mark in the seam allowances on the side front bodice and the centre front bodice pieces of the Elsie pattern.
Overlap the seam lines and tape in place. Make sure they match at the armhole – don’t worry that they don’t overlap at the waist. Repeat this for the centre back and the side back pieces. I’m only doing the front pieces here but the process is the same!
Overlay the Betty add-on bodice – they should match at the shoulder and armhole edge as below.
Trace this armhole edge. Transfer the notches if you can – the top one will fall in a bit of an awkward place so you may want to move it! You will need to slightly adjust the seam allowance on piece A to still maintain a 1.5cm allowance. And you will need to add a tiny bit onto the side seam of B (try curve this in smoothly). But you should end up with something like the below! The bolder lines are what you’ll end up adapting.
Note: You’ll also need to re-draft the facing pieces for the Elsie neckline. You can simply just create a narrow facing pieces by free-handing a curve like below:
Disregard the armhole and lower section, you just need the neckline bit really. You’ll want to make sure it’s narrow enough that it doesn’t interfere with the seam allowance of the sleeve, just saves things being bulky.
Click here to jump back to the Brainstorming section.