How I made Villanelle's pink dress from Killing Eve

As a fan of Killing Eve, Villanelle's amazing fashion brought a little bit of something extra to the show. When THAT pink dress made an appearance and I actually gasped, the idea of it and stuck with me for a long time. It wasn't until recently that I saw a few YouTube videos of people making this dress I thought I might have a go at making the pattern and sewing up my version of the dress.

After studying some images of the dress, I realised that it wasn't a very technical design and with my current experience of patternmaking would be a great challenge.

Using my own bodice blocks, I decided to remove the darts and increase the size of the front and back bodices by 1 cm to add extra ease and give these pieces a more boxy feel. I then adjusted the lengths to the empire waist level, ensuring that the side seams matched and the slop of the waist was the same for the front and back.

Next, I needed to adjust the front bodice to have a square neckline and gathered front. I used the princess line as my marker and adjusted the front bodice into two pieces. One being the side front that would have the shoulder, underarm and side seams and the other was the front gathered panel. After experimentation with some scrap fabric, for a good amount of gathering the front panel was 65cm x 28.5cms (which included 0.6cm on all edges for seam allowance). I planned to space out the gathers horizontally approximately 1 inch (or 2.5 cms) apart.

The back bodice was next. I matched its shape similarly to the front. Matching shoulder seams and curving into the square back neckline. I allowed enough seam allowance for a center back zip closure. However, as I ended up using organza fabric I opted to sew up the back seam, and put the dress on over my head.

I didn't need to draft a specific pattern for the skirt. I was just going to use the width of the fabric and the length would depend on how much fabric I could source. I planned to use machine basting to gather the top of the skirt and ease into the waist of the bodice matching all side seams.

I made a sample version of the gathered front and back bodice was happy with how it turned out. Now it's time to go fabric shopping!

So off to the shops and I had my heart set on using organza for this dress. I had seen online that other people has used tulle for their patterns. I liked the look, drape and structure of organza fabric. I hadn't really worked with it before, so it was going to be fun to experiment with. Also, I had used tulle in past and it is an absolute pain to try to gather. Considering this dress was going to have a lot of gathering, I decided organza was the way to go.

Unfortunately, there was only limited stock of the pink organza that I had my eye on. I think I only ended up with about 3.5/4m of fabric. Which was disappointing as the dress probably wasn't going to be as puffy as I had imagined. I found a poplin fabric that was a very similar colour to the organza. I decided that I would line the dress with poplin. This would add bulk and maybe something to sew to if the organza was difficult to seam finish neatly. After finding some matching pink thread, I purchased 5m of poplin and 3.4/4m of organza and it came to a total of around $40.

Now it was was time to cut out the pattern and get sewing. I basically cut out two of everything except the sleeves. For the front lining of the gathered panel, I just cut out a rectangle that was the same size as what I intended as the finished front gathered panel.

The dress sewed up fairly easily. I ended up with an extra waist frill (glad it was seam finished) by accident. I left it in place as it was a nice little addition. I left the dress hem unfinished. So here is my version of the dress. I hope you like it.

This dress was super fun to create and it is cute to wear.

Until next time,

Sarah x