Marilyn Red dress

Me and the boyfriend have decided to make this iconic dress from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (he's Jane Russell, and i'm Marilyn) for our Christmas outing at Cybil's House. I know it's not Christmasey (apart from being red maybe), but it's a good excuse to try and make it.

Yeah, this really is a challenge! It was a challenge just sourcing the material. I searched everywhere online and only found one place that stocked it, but they were out of stock. When I contacted them, they told me that the material had been discontinued. I had tried all my usual shops, but one day I decided to visit Shepherds Bush, in West London. There's a whole street full of fabric shops there. After visiting six or seven shops, I finally found it at Toni Textiles. There was only five meters left on the roll, so I took the lot!

We began by creating a toile, a test version of the bodice, so that adjustments could be made. I have never done this before, but for this dress it's important that it's very well fitted. I had just got a new tailor's dummy, so I could adjust it to my measurements pretty accurately.

Once I was happy with the toile, I converted this to a pattern, marking out the darts;

From that, I cut the material and transferred the markings.

So, so far, so good. That's all for now, i've gotta work some night shifts for the next few days, so will give an update later in the week.