Daily Mail dress and jacket conversion
Behind the scenes of Daily Mail journalist Clover Stroud’s wedding dress and jacket conversion.
For her second wedding, Clover wore a beautiful little dress covered in butterflies. She looked and felt a million dollars. Three children and seven years later, it no longer fitted and had been relegated to the back of Clover’s wardrobe.
Along with her wedding dress, Clover also brought along her ‘ancient’ Jigsaw jacket that she no longer wore because it didn’t feel comfortable.
It’s a pretty big responsibility to convert someone’s wedding dress but incredible things are possible with conversion. It was so exciting to be able to bring Clover’s gorgeous dress back into her life and turn her old jacket into something fresh and ‘new.’
Conversion is about taking our power back and making our clothes work for us – if something is too small there are plenty of things you can do to let them out and make them wearable once again.
Read the Daily Mail article here.
And here’s how I did it…!
Clover’s wedding dress conversion:
- I removed the sash that was attached to the dress at the back. This gave us a surprising amount of excess fabric to play with.
- Used the excess fabric to create extra panels, and therefore inches, down each side so the dress so it fitted beautifully once again.
- I lengthened the dress by adding three types of grosgrain ribbon from VV Rouleaux which also had the extra benefit of highlighting the colours of the dress and giving a little extra volume and structure. The fabric was quite floppy so the ribbons gave a whole new look and changed the way the dress hung and moved.
- I made the sleeves fit once again by opening up the seams and adding an extra panel of the fabric, starting from under the arm and running all the way to the wrist.
The dress now fits Clover beautifully and looked stunning on her in its new form. It’s emerged from it’s second chrysalis!
Clover’s jacket conversion:
For the jacket, I used the remaining butterfly fabric from the sash to make the Jigsaw jacket fit her properly and give it a brand new twist.
1. We put the butterfly fabric under the back of the collar and on the inside lining of the sleeves so Clover could turn up the collar and turn back the sleeves to add a bolt of colour to her outfits.
2. To add extra space in the sleeves I opened up the seams all the way from under the arm to the wrists and added a strip of the butterfly fabric. This gave a striking and original flash of colour and added extra room so it fitted Clover comfortably again.
3. I couldn’t resist a quick eBay search for ‘Clover’ buttons and was thrilled to find two tiny vintage beauties which I attached near the lapel button hole to give the jacket a fun, personal feature.
Clover loved it so much that, after her ‘After’ fitting, she wore the jacket straight out of my front door and into an editors lunch. The dress looked stunning and the jacket now has added interest and a personal connection, featuring fabric from her wedding dress.
It was so much fun to get to know Clover and help her convert her clothes.
Make sure you read Clover’s book – it’s fabulous!
