Shreyas and I got married six months ago and had a very special day with sunshine and a lotta love and DOLPHINS and dancing. I might write more about how it made me feel, and what it is like to be a spouse at some point… but maybe that is best saved for emails and letters to friends. The short version is that the memory of the day is something I hope to cherish for the rest of my life, I have a handful of minor regrets but essentially everything worked perfectly. 

What I do want to do, in line with the ‘making stuff is great!’ vibe of this blog, is write out some details about the things I sewed for the wedding. This is going to be very detailed and likely not of interest if you’re not into sewing, but you can scroll for some nice pictures. 

I had roughly planned to make one item of wedding clothing a month (including a dress to wear to my sister’s wedding), starting in August and finishing in December. Instead, I finished the first item in October, made a totally unplanned item in early December, finished my dress a week later, finished Shreyas’s pants five days before the wedding, and the dress for Shar’s wedding at the end of January. But it all worked out (bar the 15 things I vaguely thought of making then nixed). I was curious about my motivation in this regard — why was I procrastinating so much? But it turns out I really do love a deadline.

These were basically all the sewing projects I worked on from August 2025-February 2026, bar a few tiny things like the bike pouch mentioned in this post. It definitely used up a lot of my big projects energy, and I also did less knitting and zine-making as a result. Going away for three months and doing no sewing (except a little mending) was a good way to recover. It made me reflect on what building a sustainable creative life looks like… and getting to make lots of stuff for our wedding is part of that, which I will definitely use when thinking about making in the months and years to come. The other lesson was…. sewing friends (shout-out Simone especially, but Maddie also got lots of process pics) are very important for getting feedback and encouragement on the way.

1. Sari bodice 

Pattern: Calvin Crop with modification for wide strap and button up back rather than full wrap ties

Fabric: One metre of slubby cream Korean cotton ($20), some rigilene boning  

I liked the corset-but-not vibes of this pattern, and thought it would work great as a sari blouse, no bra required. The toile went perfectly – the pattern has great instructions for a full bust adjustment (designed for a B-cup, I have a D-cup), and in lightweight blockprinted cotton, all I needed to do was a little arm dart for a perfect fit. After eyeing up something brighter white, I decided I liked this quite-yellow cream in the fabric shop instead, to be a white item that would go well with my skin tone and the red shimmery heirloom sari I wanted to wear for the wedding ceremony. 

So I went into the final garment extremely confident. This was unwarranted! The pattern has great instructions for an overlocker-free, French-seam free clean finish inside. But I wanted to change the straps to be wider, so the sari could be pinned to my shoulders easily. So I made the main bodice layer double-layered as well so the straps could come out of it, and made an armhole and neck facing for the back. This meant I couldn’t try on the top until all the seams were finished. 

Following the measurements from the first time, I made and attached the bodice, but it was terrible, lumpy and gaping. ‘That’s OK,’ I thought, ‘I have heaps of fabric left.’ So I unpicked everything, made the FBA bigger and cut out two more pieces and attached them. Somehow it was even worse. Using a stiffer fabric and making it two layers was totally messing with the design. Luckily, my friend/sewing inspiration Simone came over and suggested that the problem was not the size but the lack of vertical tension (I didn’t want to attach the straps until the fit was right). Simone was totally right – the original pattern piece did fit with vertical tension. But I was learning an important lesson about intended design: with extra-wide straps, the neckline looked horrible – sort of like the clothes a doll might wear. At this point, ‘lots of fabric left in the metre’ was more like ‘scraps of fabric left in weird shapes’. 

I unpicked the straps and cut them narrower. I squeezed out two more bodice pieces (I had cut the original bodice instead of unpicking it because I was very mad). It was about 10 pm. I stitched everything back together, and luckily the other alterations were OK (although I should have made the button-up wrap on the back a little tighter). Adding rigilene to the seams looked good. Somehow one side seam was shorter than the other, so I just cut it the front piece until it was the right height, since I really didn’t have it in me to 

2. Veil 

Fabric: Machine embroidered ivory silk georgette ($40 worth I think?), $16 comb, plus heaps of secondhand beads 

I didn’t really think I wanted a veil, but the Silks NZ website is a dangerous place, and a Carly B video where she does cartridge pleating really inspired me. So I bought a remnant piece of silk and cut out the bottom in a curve, to be about knee length. I handsewed a rolled hem, and did six rows of running stitches for the cartridge pleats at the top. Except I didn’t measure them, but with the flowy fabric it made it warm and wobbly. I didn’t even figure out how to secure the ends properly, just tucked the loose ends under on the wedding day. The offcuts of fabric we used as ribbons around my bouquet. 

I really loved wearing the veil and from the day I cut it out I would occasionally put it on and flounce around the house. It was so flowy! I pulled out the beads I got from a friend’s sister who was leaving for uni in approximately 2014, and pulled out lots of shiny white ones, and the odd blue or pink or yellow bead to keep it interesting. The beading was heaps of work and probably needed to be a full line of beads on the hem (rather than approximately every two centimetres) to really be noticeable or weight the veil meaningfully. I also added two lines of beads to the cartridge pleats, and bead clusters on the embroidery. It is very sad that white veils are not a normal item of clothing because I would 100% wear this again if it was. I did manage to convince Shar to wear this veil for her wedding Parkrun, and if anyone else is getting married and wants a veil, I will definitely offer it again. Wish I’d finished it in time for my hen’s tramp tbh. After the stress of the sari bodice, the hand stitching on this was so relaxing and it turned out great, the most straightforward and fun wedding item to sew. 

3. Main dress 

Pattern: Acton Dress, full bust and button back modifications, crossed straps instead of straight (using the View B low back on the View A design)

Fabric: Orange and blue shot silk dupion, three metres at $30/metre, plus block printed cotton for the lining

I didn’t want a white wedding (reception) dress but I did want a wedding dress made of Indian silk. The Acton dress is a wonderful pattern, and the finishing on view A in particular is so neat — I love how the wrap can be tied front or back, and it produces a narrow dress look while still not restricting my legs for dancing. 

While some silk is badly behaved (scroll to item 6 for despair), silk duponi is a little stiffer and a dream to work with. I did wash it once (with a wool wash), so it was not quite as shiny as when I first bought the fabric, but I was still obsessed with the slight shimmer from the blue. I did a FBA (pattern drafted for a B-cup) but probably overdid it, as I was able to wriggle into the dress without undoing any of the buttons. Speaking of, I really like the bridal vibe of having button and loop fastening with really close together buttons, so I replaced the invisible zips with buttons and a small flap underneath so no skin was visible. The shank buttons were quite wonky but the tension from the loops balanced things out. The front skirt is supposed to be cut in one piece, on 150cm wide fabric. Instead, with 120cm fabric, I used the selvedge as a centre seam and pressed it open. I think I made the seam allowance was a little too big, but the small mismatch with the back was fixed in the French seams, and the texture of the fabric is such that the seam is hardly visible.

If I did this again, I would look into putting more structure underneath, like a corselette or interlining or something, which I think would make everything sit more nicely in the princess seams. I’m planning to make the long-sleeved version of this pattern as a top in a red cotton (probably putting the invisible zip in the side, not the back), so I will definitely play with the sizing when toiling. But I had a great time making this and am stoked with how it turned out, I just need an excuse to make some more In the Folds patterns. 

4. Shreyas’s pants 

Pattern: Worker Trousers (men) heavily modified to be slimmer

Fabric: Two metres (with heaps left over) of wide-wale $20/metre camel corduroy. Blockprinted cotton pocketing.

A month before the wedding, this was still on the ‘maybe’ list. After getting back from New Year’s camping, I thought I would make it and still have two weeks until the wedding… but my mum and sister were going for a five day tramp which sounded really fun. Shreyas assured me he could take care of wedding things so I could go, but he did not want or know how to sew these trousers. And I really wanted to make them for him because the fabric was going to match the shirt he wore to the reception perfectly. 

But even though I heavily modified the pattern, slashing and unspreading so the legs were narrower (it is so hard to find online sewing patterns for mens trousers, the options are few or elastic waisted unisex options, and Spotlight didn’t have much either), this was essentially a very straightforward project where the only thing that went wrong was leaving the overlocked belt loops at Simone’s house and having to run there to get them the next morning. Apart from that, everything was done in a day, I didn’t have matching thread which isn’t too noticeable because of the thickness of the corduroy and I even made sure all the wales were going in the right direction. I remember really liking the fly construction instructions for this pattern, but I have no memory of how they actually worked. The legs were perhaps a tad too narrow (the pockets are a bit too tight for Shreyas to walk around with his hands in his pockets) but they looked great. 

I also tried to do some major alterations to Shreyas’s original kurta, which was a gorgeous off-white silk with side seam pockets but had too narrow of a waist to fit over his broad shoulders. I added an invisible zip on one side and let out the seam but it still didn’t fit. Thankfully Shreyas’s mum was able to get an alternative one in India. 

5. Paper embroidery 

This is possibly the most pintresty thing in our wedding and was directly inspired by a YouTube Short. It was another thing that was on the ‘nice to have’ list at the end of December, and I had brought the supplies and sketched the design to do the embroidery while camping over New Years but I got a little distracted by the bestest most engaging knitting pattern of COMPLICATED LACE for the Kuutar top (because Naomii gave me some pink cotton/wool yarn as a hen’s party gift) and spent 10 solid hours working on that instead. So instead most of it got done on the drive to and from the West Coast to go tramping with Shar and Mum. 

I used stiff paper which got crunched somewhat and didn’t measure properly so the vows inside stuck out a bit, but who cares, I think they looked great. One said “Shanti & Shreyas” and the other said “Shreyas and Shanti”; one had a sunshine and a bike wheel, one had a flower. I don’t think they were that noticeable to other people but I loved having them. 

6. Bonus: Dress to wear to Shar’s wedding 

Pattern: Steely Dress. Slightly shortened, using selvedge rather than a hem facing and omitting the top stitching thanks to using badly behaved silk fabric

Fabric: A sari which had belonged to my grandmother, blue and red shot silk (essentially very purple)

The panelled skirt came together beautifully, using the selvedge ‘sari fall’ as a design feature. The pattern weirdly says to top stitch the overlocked seam allowance. ‘That’s not a problem, I can make flat felled seams’, I thought. NO!! The snarly slippery silk hated it (pattern was designed for heavyweignt stable fabric like linen and denim) and trying to unpick without causing holes was a nightmare. 

Simone and her overlocker came to the rescue again. There are some little holes, and a small place where extra fabric got overlocked but the whole fraysome operation was too delicate to unpick and fix. The top, with the gathered bust and straps, fit perfectly, as the design fit my measurements perfectly. In the process of sewing, the waist got stretched, even though I stay stitched, so I just made the seam allowance on the invisible zip really wide (also horrible to install). I would love to make this again with a different fabric but I will definitely use this again and it was really nice that Shar and I both could use saris for this wedding. 

7. Bonus: JJ’s suit 

Self drafted reversible vest, Tatjana Trousers modified for a lower waist (really screwed this up due to sloppiness but hey it fits)

Fabric: Navy wool suiting (about $25/metre IIRC) and opshop cotton tie-dyed by me

No details about this but it turned out great, the client was very happy (initially sewn for their Year 12 ball but getting a second life at the wedding!). 

I could have written about twice as much about all of these projects – if you are also sewing and have a specific question about what I did and how I did it, leave a comment or email me <3