The Rose Rivers Dress – World Book Day Costume

This year for World Book Day my daughter decided she would like to go dressed as a character from one of Jacqueline Wilson’s latest books: Rose Rivers.  We only had the cover art to go on, but in my stash of vintage patterns given to me by a dear friend, I found this 80s extravaganza of a pattern, already cut in an age 10, that my friend’s mum had used to make her a bridesmaid’s dress for her uncle’s wedding.  Now, 25 years later, it was going to be used again!

I bought mint green and emerald green crepe fabric, and some mint green trim which looked as though it would coordinate on my computer screen, and luckily it did in real life!

The first alteration I needed to do was to create a separate pattern piece for the top section of the bodice.  Next, I rotated the dart so that it could be incorporated into one of the design lines creating the V effect on the main bodice.

I then needed to change the sleeves to make them fit on the fabric I had left.  I slashed into the pattern and condensed it slightly to make it narrow enough to fit the fabric, but still be reasonably voluminous.  It’s a good job I wasn’t making sleeves for Anne of Green Gables!!

The rest was pretty straightforward, really.  I topstitched the V design, because piecing it would have been much more time consuming.

The result was a proper 80s vibe dress and I think it definitely looks like the one Rose Rivers is wearing in the illustration.  My daughter and I were rather taken aback when the paperback version of the book came out, as they had changed the colour of the dress to an insipid pink which just seemed so wrong!

My daughter loves the dress and still wears it now as just a normal, everyday dress!