Following on from the kimono/ pyjama bridal gift post, I’ve finally gotten round to posting the jumpsuits I made for our bridesmaids outfits!

So before we get into the whole “Jumpsuits? For a wedding? That’s totally not going to work!” thing, I’ll just start by saying that this was for a low-key civil service for a very modern and chilled out bride. I don’t think jumpsuits would work for every wedding!

But they were the perfect choice for this one!

I invented the ‘Martine’ jumpsuit hack last year as a birthday present for one of my sisters. (And was totally jealous afterwards that I didn’t have one myself!). It got a lot of love on Instagram and I even saw a few of them pop up of people’s #makenine lists! I loved the style and vibe of the jumpsuit. It comes off surprisingly dressy and glam in the right fabric as well as being quite figure flattering. Plus there was the added bonus that we could definitely wear them again afterwards… 🤣

Fabric choice was all important with this though. The shop where I’d gotten the fabric for my sister’s one had closed down so there was no hope of replicating it exactly. I knew we’d need something woven which was soft and drapey with ideally a mid to large scale print. That sounds quite specific but once you start to look at the range of printed viscose there is in the world you’ll find it’s really not!

In the end we went with a navy blue printed viscose challis from Stoff & Stil which had these large oriental style flowers across it in pinks and reds. (Unfortunately I don’t think they’re stocking this one anymore ☹️ though that might be because we bought it all… We ended up getting 12 metres just to be on the safe side!).

After that it was just a matter of pinning down each of the other 3 bridesmaids to take measurements and to get going on actually making them!

Luckily the other 3 girls are quite similar sizes and one of them was exactly the same size as my sister which gave me a bit of relief since I then had a very good idea of how this would look on her!

Working production style is not something I’ve ever done before and it’s a strange thing to be using so much of the same fabric and to be doing multiples of the same task.

The first thing I had to do was to produce the hacked patterns for each of us so there was a lot of tracing and drawing going on. (By the way this is a perfect example of why you should trace your patterns and not cut into them as I needed to use multiple sizes!). It’s a simple hack though – you can read my original instructions here or watch my latest youtube videos which show you how to do it!

I cut and sewed my own one up first – mostly so I could test out my pattern hacking skills and remind myself how to put it together and work out any kinks! It was definitely for the best as I then made some small adjustments to the others after trialling mine.

After that it was pretty straightforward to finish them all off. Because they’re quite a loose fitting style, it was easy for my to fit them all and was mostly just a case of adjusting hem lengths and adding in the safety catch at the bridesmaids’ desired height.

I LOVED how they turned out. I think we looked pretty snazzy! This pic is after a long night of dancing around and the jumpsuits held out pretty well!

Plus they’re ridiculously comfy. It’s like wearing pyjamas! Just super secret ones!

I think if it was any other style, I probably wouldn’t have made them myself, especially if they were very fitted or any more intricate. I think it would’ve been much too stressful! As it is I felt a fair bit of pressure to get these done!

I’m really glad I made these though. It was definitely worth the hard work!

I also made a tie out of the same fabric for one of our best guy friends who wasn’t able to be one of the bridesmaids but he did make the most awesome wedding cake and was totally one of the wedding party!

I used this free tie pattern which I made narrower at the business end of things to make sure it didn’t look like a “Dad” tie! For future reference, make the tie width 6.5cm to keep it looking cool!

(As a side note, I also made the flower crown that the bride is wearing!)

All in all, it was a pretty successful day!!

Don’t forget to check out my YouTube channel to keep up to date with all my latest videos!