Another Nigerian Wedding | Vogue 1426

Hello, friends! I was invited to another Nigerian wedding last month and this time, I was given the opportunity to wear the aso ebi of the wedding party! Aso Ebi is a uniform dress or dressing code/style that is worn in certain African cultures as an indicator of cooperation, camaraderie, and solidarity during ceremonies, events, and festive periods.

Out of this beautiful Aso Ebi fabric, I made the skirt from Vogue 1426 (OOP) in a size 14.

Fabric

Okay, so about this fabric. I bought this fabric straight from Nigeria through the bride & groom's wedding website! It's a BEAUTIFUL burgundy floral lace with sequins around the flower petals and accents of yellow, green, and pale pink. It's way more gorgeous in person than these pictures show, sorry to say.

As soon as I received the fabric, I went straight to my Sortly app to check out my directory of patterns that I'd tagged as "Evening" since this was going to be for a wedding. Sidenote: If you want to know more about how I keep my patterns organized and categorized, you can check out this video. Anyway, I picked a few choices and pulled them out of the pattern cabinet and narrowed it down to Vogue 1426, but only the skirt because I only had 3 yards of the lace. But Vogue 1426 has the contrasting skirt ruffle so I knew I had to pick a color in the lace that would compliment it. Not wanting to buy anything new, I help up the lace to my fabric stash and saw that I had a forest green fabric that was shiny on one side and suede on the other. And it was stretch!

The green stretch suede is one of the fabrics I inherited from the #KHolmesCollection. I wrote a post about how I came into over a hundred yards of fabrics, but if you click that tag, you'll see all of the things I've made from that collection so far. I also liked it because I already had green suede sandals in my closet that matched perfectly.

For the lining, I picked up a green fabric from JoAnn Fabrics labeled "Hunter Posh Lining" and it is 100% polyester. I like the way it didn't cause too much of a scene with the lace laid over it. 

Pattern & Adjustments

My only apprehension about choosing this pattern was that the skirt is connected to the bodice asymmetrically and I wanted to even out the top of the skirt. Between the pleats and all of the pieces and other design elements, I couldn't figure it out. Not to mention, I was on a 4.5-day time CRUNCH. I left the skirt with the asymmetrical waist and decided I would just wear it higher on the waist and let whatever top I chose to have the ability to be tucked in

To begin with the adjustments, I added 4.5 inches to the hem of all of the skirt pieces after tissue fitting with my heels on. I only had to have that much because I wanted the skirt to be sitting at my waist, as opposed to where it should normally fall near the upper hips.

Also, I sewed down all of the pleats on the skirt. I cut a size a little too big, and the pleats fell in a weird way around my midsection, so I sewed them flat and I think it made the skirt more attractive.

The selvage of this lace was a BEAUTIFUL scalloped edge. I didn't get any of the selvages on the pattern pieces, so I hand cut both selvages of all 3 yards of this fabric and hand sewed the scallop on both the hem of the skirt AND the edges of both sides of the ruffles! When I tell you, those ruffles almost went RAW, but I had Carol's look of disappointment in my head and went ahead and went the extra 3 miles! lol

I didn't quite have enough of the scalloped edge, so I made it even from the top on both sides of the ruffle and used a perfectly matching bias tape to cover the last bit of the ruffle edge at the bottom.

The invisible zipper came out great and I was able to get a really clean machine finish at the waist. Sidenote, I did not have a zipper in my stash that matched, but I had just gotten home from NYC Frocktails and one of the sponsors of the event was Fabric Scrap. Fabric scrap sent a bag of assorted things and one was the perfectly colored matching invisible zipper for this dress!

I definitely cut a size too big, for the same reason as my last post, and I had to keep taking this skirt in at the sides until I ran out of time and had to move on to the top. Ridiculously enough, this skirt ALSO kept falling down throughout the night and I also had this one pinned to my top SMH. I have to do better in the future lol

Final Thoughts

I think this skirt was a HIT for the wedding. I felt so honored to be able to participate in this act of love and solidarity and to be able to celebrate with my friends!

Will I be altering the skirt to fit properly?? The jury is still out. I think I would need a specific place to wear it for me to feel the urge to make the proper adjustments. Making this skirt in such a short time really almost took me out. As I type this, I'm on a small sewing break for the rest of the year lol.

Let me know what you think of the skirt below and I'll be back in another post with details of the top I made to coordinate!

xoxo,

Tasha