Once you’ve found the perfect dress for your bridesmaids, it can be a real challenge getting the matching accessories sorted for the groomsmen. One simple – and very creative – solution to this problem is to buy an extra dress and have the accessories made from the dress itself.

A mother of the groom sent me this olive green Showpo dress and asked me to transform it into two bow ties, three pockets squares and four scrunchies. She also asked if I could keep any remnants to be used to wrap around the bride’s bouquet. Challenge accepted!

I started by first cutting the dress along the seams to free up as much fabric as possible, especially where the dress was gathered. It took a bit of creative pattern placement, but I managed to pull it off, yay!

For the bow ties, I used a little extra reinforcement to keep the shape in a perfect bow. When working with satin fabric, a few subtle sewing tricks gets you a great result. I also applied some special interfacing to the pocket squares so that they would hold their shape beautifully once tucked into the pockets of the groomsmen.

Advice for choosing a dress

If you’d like to do the same for your groomsmens’ accessories, I recommend the following:

• buy the largest dress size available in the style of your choice
• for lots of accessories, see if there is a maxi dress available in the same fabric and colour
• email me with a link to the dress and I’ll be able to give you a rough estimate of how many bowties and pocket squares you can get from the dress
• One bowtie can be made from a piece of fabric the size of an A4 piece of paper

“We’re absolutely delighted with everything that you have crafted for my son’s wedding in November. The result is amazing, thank you!” Justine, Mother of the Groom.

And there you have it! A really simple solution to getting matching bowties and pocket squares sorted for your wedding.