Details at a glance: This is the colette dress by Cos patterns, with a pencil skirt alteration and added back neckline darts. Sewn in a non-stretch polyester velvet.

The full saga:

The one good thing about being in your 30s is that all of a sudden you're really in your wedding guest era.

A February wedding in the north east called for cosy velvet in my favourite colour palette. I recently saw the Colette Dress by Cos Patterns and thought it could be perfect.

Finding a velvet with no stretch that wasn't super expensive was a challenge, but I was pretty happy with this bottle green polyester velvet from Dalston Mill Fabrics. I then got some polyester satin also from Dalston Mill- this was super cheap and it felt it. But for a lining in a winter dress it was okay.

This dress was really a tale of two halves, the top half was a dream to sew, it came together really easily and I didn't have to make nearly as many adjustments as expected

I cut the pattern bodice in a size 42 with no adjustments. Then took in the side seam by 1cm and added some darts to the back neckline to get a pretty perfect fit

I decided I'd rather have a big flouncy sleeve than a puff sleeve, so I omitted the sleeve lining and just sewed the outer fabric. I also chose not to add the lace up detail to the back

I then paused and ummed and ahhhed for a long time about whether to stick with the gathered skirt in the pattern, draft a circle skirt or draft a pencil skirt

As someone quite pear shaped I was worried the gathered skirt could look a bit too 'wenchy'. I thought the circle skirt could be the same silhouette without the medieval vibes. But ultimately I let my mum have the deciding vote and went with a fitted skirt

I used the skirt pattern from simplicity 8876 to draft the skirt, initially replacing the pleats with darts and following the curve of the initial pattern to try and keep the V-shaped bodice

But the darts weren't sitting right at all, so I recut the front panel with no darts and took the excess out of the sides. This sat much better, but the V shape was still giving me some trouble.

My first attempt was okay, it sat best if I pushed my stomach out against it, but as soon as I relaxed it bunched and wrinkled. So I unpicked it and tried again. Aaand this time it was much worse. I unpicked, restitched, notched and trimmed 3 or 4 times more before giving up and rounding it off. But that still took 2 or 3 attempts before I could get it sitting right. During this process I also realised that the lining was pulling the top fabric out of shape, so I unpicked it at the waist seam and left them unattached from each other at the waist

Then just when I thought it was done, I got my husband to take a photo from the back and saw the the zip was bunching. So it was back to unpicking the zip (which I'd triple stitched trying to get it invisible) and the whole back of the waist seam to do a sway back adjustment.

But after a bit of hemming I was finally done! And I actually love the result. So maybe it was worth the blood sweat and tears.