MAKING A SIMPLE ANKARA GOWN FOR MY SISTER AND I

Hello Needlework Monday community, it’s a great pleasure and opportunity to be here today to share something with you all. This is going to be my first post to the community and that is basically because I’ve not been getting myself busy with the needle, hehe. The most interesting part is, I’ve made this dress for quite a while now but I was a bit skeptical about sharing it because I realized late that I could actually share it on Hive! Well, you can’t blame me, it is not something I do often like @abenad 😌. And thanks to her I was motivated to still go ahead and share it because she said she likes it 🥹.

Well, well, without further ado, join me on this short journey on how I made myself and my sister a short gown. And for the records, I’m not a fashion designer, I’m more of an hairstylist but then I guess as a lady there are so many things we are just capable of doing, hehe. So I got the opportunity to make this dress about two months back when my school went into an unexpected lockdown. I traveled to a friend’s place who was a fashion designer and I have been around her long enough for me to know some basics of sewing.

I had a marriage to attend that weekend with my family so I pleaded with her to help me cut out the style I have chosen for my sister and I and as the kind sweet lady she was, she helped me and that was how I got into action even though it’s been a while I used the sewing machine. The gown was simple so I had the confidence that it would come out all nice and I’m glad it did.

So for the things we used

• fabric (Ankara) 👗
• Scissors ✂️
• Linen
• Sewing machine 🪡⚙️
• Long black zip
• Design (a long black swade design)
• Pressing Iron

These were the major things I made use of to create the dress, although I also loosen some stitches due to my mistakes and I made use of razor blade but that is behind the scenes 🌚. So like I said, I didn’t get to take a picture of when my friend did the cutting for me but it was a straight kind of cutting since it was a simple gown. She just cut out the shape of the gown using our measurements and all I had to do was start sewing immediately.

The first step was linening the already cut out pieces, which took me some time because I had forgotten how it’s done but I later got it right. After linening the pieces, I had to use my pressing iron to straighten up my stitches to help it look neater and more professional like my friend’s work, hehe.

After I was done with straightening it out, I sewed in my long zip at the front and added my black design to it. This part was a lot harder for me because I was making use of a motor for the sewing machine so I was going a bit faster than normal but it was still okay, I did it.

When I was done adding the zip and design, I did the joining of the shoulders and then closed the gown on both sides and then my sister helped me add the pockets since I kept making mistakes with it. And this is how it looks!

Below are some images of my sister and I feeling good in our new Ankara dress 🥹.

I do hope you had a great time stopping by, please feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments below, I hope I get some good feedbacks, hehe. I have a lot more to make when I go back for this holiday and I look forward to also sharing it with you 🥰.

_{The images used are mine}