A Dress Challenge: Jodi Bohra Part 1

So as we mentioned in our Dress Challenge post we have agreed to design and make two outfits for our friend to wear to a wedding. The first one that we tackled was the Jodi Bohra. This outfit appears to go by many different names, depending I presume on the different origins and slight different variations of the outfit.

The outfit we are making is comprised of:

• A lehenga – which is a long pleated skirt
• A choli or kurti – a tight fit blouse with short sleeves
• A Dupatta – a long scarf which is usually worn to cover the head and shoulders.

There seem to be so many different variations on colours, patterns, styles that it is pretty much a case of anything will work.

The colour scheme which we are working with for this is orange and purple, with gold as a highlight colour.

• The skirts main colour will be orange, with purple and gold trims.
• The bodice blouse will be plain orange as this will be covered most of the time by the scarf, so it will simply match the fabric of the skirt.
• The scarf will be orange with an overlay of purple. So the main colour appears purple, but the orange will come through from underneath.

Fabrics:

The skirt and blouse will be from a fairly light polycotton fabric.

The scarf will be a chiffon layer with lace on top.

Trims will be satin ribbons, lace and crocheted appliques.

We started by getting some samples from tiaknight fabrics, these included chiffon, a variety of lace fabrics and some trims.

From these samples the lace that we selected was the scalloped floral lace, for the trims the peacock purple trim and the paisley trim, and the skirt fabric will be the orange polycotton.

Scarf Design

The scarf will be made from a layer of orange chiffon and purple lace over the top.

The layers were laid out and safety pinned together as the pins are quite prone to falling out. Then the layers were french seamed together so that the raw edges were enclosed. A small section of the scarf was left un-stitched to allow the scarf to be turned out. Once turned out the scarf was top-stitched to close it.

This will require some form of stitching to hold the layers together. The crocheted mirrors will be stitched in the centre of the lace flowers in various positions across the scarf to hold it together and add embellishment.

But even without any embellishment it looks pretty good as a headscarf.

Skirt Design

For the skirt design it will be pleated across the top on the front and the back, with a ribbon through the waistband to allow it to be tightened.

On the bottom of the skirt it will have a wide purple trim, purple lace to tie in with the scarf and the narrow purple trim. Above the trims it will have crocheted mirrored circles attached to the skirt.

The skirt base was constructed in polycotton with 6 pleats on the front and back panels of the skirt. These were pressed in with an iron once pinned in place.

The skirt was sewn across the top of the pleats to hold the pleats in place.

The front and back panels were then stitched together along one side of the skirt, except from at the bottom, as they would have to be unstitched to allow the trims to be be sewn in to the side seam.

Then a waistband was stitched across the top of the two pleated sections of the skirt. This will be folded over twice to create a channel for the ribbon to go in and it will be topstitched underneath the waistband fold.

The wide trim was stitched to the bottom of the the skirt panels so it could be turned up and topstitched onto the skirt panels. Then a strip of the lace from the scarf material was stitched above this. Above the lace material the thin ribbon was stitched. Creating approximately 20cm of trim on the bottom of the skirt.

Above this edge trim will be the crocheted mirrors. I laid these out on the table in position and then placed pins in as markers to indicate where to hand stitch them on.

Once these are stitched on the sides of the skirt need to be stitched up the sides and finish off the channel for the ribbon, then the skirt will be complete.

Definitely a decent portion of the outfit is completed. The blouse has not been started but hopefully that should be a fairly straightforward task once I have worked out the pattern that is going to be used.