The Finished Dress

Throwback Thursday once more- one you all have been waiting for!

I can't remember where we left off... But I can tell you life happened.  I really have intended to write this post for a long time, but there are big things happening in life offline that have pulled me away from the blog-o-sphere.

I was gonna give you all more of a blow-by-blow of the ending fiddly bits- and the meltdown they almost caused.  This last bit is, I think, the thing I would do the most different, and where the best of plans ended up falling through with even better results...

All the buttons and the hem were done, by hand, on my living room floor, with the dress sitting between me and a dear fitting angel on the Wednesday before my bachelorette party Thursday and the weekend of wedding adventures. Those hours of help were filled with great conversation, wisdom shared, and oh, the stories... I'll always be grateful for the best of folks sharing their time to make this dress and this wedding happen.

My aunt and my cousin steamed the dress on the farm the morning of the wedding while my amazing bridesmaids and I were all getting hair done and having too much fun with makeup.
 Another aunt put together a veil from some tulle when I realized my grandmother's from 1952 had been left at home, 4 hours away.  I made a bow tie the morning of the wedding from some lovely Liberty of London lawn, backed with scraps from my wedding dress.  It was wonderful... The whole wedding was a great big child that the village raised, and my wardrobe was really just one illustration of that, even as last minute as it was.

 Last minute is in my blood- There's a picture of my mom ironing the Mother of the Bride dress that her mom wore to my aunt's wedding with a clock in the background, showing that the wedding started 5 minutes later.


Accessories:  If there is interest I can pull better pictures of everything.

-pearls from my grandmothers were made into my tiara, which also included a pin from my Nana, who passed away in July(she taught me to sew, and was able to help me re-make the veil I originally planned to wear).
-I wore an heirloom pair of chandelier earrings with raw diamond centers to flowers, which were first worn by my great-great-Godmother- they're over 100 years old!
-My pearls were a gift- I think from my dad's mom, but I can't remember which ones I went with in all the crazy.
-The wrap was from a professor- she brought it back from me from India as a surprise gift!

But I'm going to hush and give you pictures because they are what you really want.    The silk really glowed in the light and fell beautifully- and I'm kind of still in love with how it all turned out, despite how last minute some of it was.  I posted a couple of shots  of us practicing our first dance just so you could see how well the dress moved, and because my bustle made me really stinking happy.

Thank you thank you thank you for all of the comments, the support and the encouragement you have shared through this process.  I have always been told that whether or not you can imagine every detail of your wedding after the fact, you will always remember how it felt... and it felt wonderful to have all of my family and all of the food, and the love in one place for one magic night.

Stitching, fitting woes and SO CLOSE

This is another post in my new(ish) Throwback Thursdays series.  I've used this spot as a way to highlight the process of sewing my wedding dress over the past few weeks, although a bad cold kept me away from the computer for a couple of weeks, and a new computer means this is a post without pictures.  Read on for the latest steps in the journey!


So I overcame fear of the machine, and it was smooth sailing because of all of the hours of basting.
And it was a big moment when I finally got to put the dress on... and a good bit of shock too.  In the 2 and a half weeks between un-stitching the muslin and putting real stitches in the silk, I'd lost nearly 3 inches at my bust and probably an inch at my waist. Thanks, stress.  And thankfully, a good bit of the excess pinched out at the sides pretty easily, and with the addition of foam inserts at the bust, the shape was maintained without messing with the hand-sticthed, carefully clipped princess seams.
 This was not a welcome surprise, but I unpicked the join of the lining and the dress at the top, berated myself for not trying it on sooner, stepped away from the dress overnight, took in the side seams, and put everything back together.

I used organza selvages to strengthen the curve at the neckline, and all the way around the dress, which really helped the integrity of the silk when the top had to be un-stitched and re-stitched. The straps went in the front at this point, to be pinned to the right placement in the back.

This is the point where I needed to go to the fitter/hemmer who is a friend of a friend and get the back marked for all the tiny pearl buttons, and for the accompanying tiny button loops.  She also pinned the hem in place, and I was very proud of myself, y'all.  I left it with her for her to hem. I let my baby- the project that had consumed all waking, non-working hours for some time at this point- in the hands of an almost complete stranger.

She had the horsehair, and the silk thread, and the dress, and I'd see it in a week to sew on all of those tiny pearl buttons and the bustle.  Cue a sigh of relief and the simultaneous biting of nails...

Cutting and basting

This is installment 2 of Throwback Thursdays... I am attempting to catch up the blog with all the sewing I've done and somehow missed blogging about, and I figured the best place to start was my wedding dress.  So without further ado...

Trying on the muslin over the petticoat and corselette was a really good feeling.  I finally felt like I really knew what the dress would look like! And it was so fluffy! And not at all what I imagined and everything I imagined. It was pretty great. And of course, I forgot to take a single picture.

So it was time to mark my fitting changes (running and stress had made all of my measurements smaller from the waist up... Not fun. :/) and when that was done, I got to rip the muslin apart, iron all the pieces, cut them down, mark the right sides with washi tape, and then lay them out on a silk sandwich that was 8 yards long. 

The makeup of the sandwich: habotai silk lining on the bottom, silk organza in the middle, and the gorgeous shantung silk on the top layer. I pinned the layers together using superfine, very sharp silk pins, and it took a few attempts, but I finally got all of the muslin pieces on the silk, on grain.  Small victories, and pretty scrap piles! Silk at the front, lining in the middle, organza at the back. I've found so many cool uses for the scraps.  To include the bias mentioned last week for the edge of the corselette... I also made enough for the shoulder straps, hanger straps, and more!

Then came the basting. I pinned pieces together 2 or three at a time, then stitched it all together with orange silk thread, just to make sure everything would lay smoothly and come together properly. Everything stayed pinned in its silk sandwich all put away till I was ready for it, and I went from front to back, adding godets in batches. It took many many hours, but it was a strange sort of calming, if that makes any sense. I just listened to podcasts, and stitched. It was meditative and prayerful and calming, and since the rest of wedding planning was really going crazy, I was so thankful for that. 

Once everything was basted together, it was kind of difficult to imagine turning my sewing machine loose on it.  It was one of those silly things that was half-paralyzing:  I was so close to finishing this dress, without a whole lot of time to spare, and I was TERRIFIED that using my sewing machine on it would somehow ruin it.  So it sat.  For 2 days.  And I turned my attention to other wedding-y things that were demanding, like flowers. And wine choices, and vendors... So I'll leave y'all here till next week.  

Wedding Dress Guts

Why yes! It IS over 2 months after the wedding.  And I did, indeed, finish my wedding gown... not as on time as I would have liked, but there you have it.  When we left off, we were at 17 hours and a finished muslin.  Then came the guts... All of the underpinnings needed to really showcase the fabric and the lines and the awesome sauce nature of all of the work. I'll keep working through the dress in posts in a new bloggy bit of awesome I'm gonna tag as throwback Thursdays, looking at completed projects I neglected to blog as I was completing them.

I started from the bottom... It was like petticoat junction, except not really. I DID make one fantastic petticoat though. It was fun, especially once the colored stuff came into play. There was a red/pink layer on the bottom, then a blue layer, then 2 white outer layers. So fluffy. SO FLUFFY! You can tell in the photos that there are actually 2 pieces, the outer layers and the inner layers... It made it that much easier to get everything through the sewing machine. 

I spent about 12 hours, maybe more, building this petticoat.  It was a process to be sure, but the colors would have been difficult to duplicate in anything RTW, and I got to split the back of the petticoat and then add in even more fluff on the outer layers to help the train do its thing better.

Next came the corselette I built. The outside was a twill, and the inside was a batiste, both cotton. I used spiral steel boning in combination with steel corset boning, and I cut everything down and capped everything off. Add in soft foam cups, and we were in business! The top of the corselette was finished with shantung bias after this photo was taken to ensure that if things played peek-a-boo, it wouldn't be as obvious.

That's the quick-and-dirty version of the underpinnings saga.  My goal is to post the rest of the wedding dress construction in a couple more posts, about once a week, and get back to blogging on a more regular basis here in the near future.  I miss it! The internet sewing community is such a great place, and I have more time and sewing mojo than I have in a while so I am looking forward to blogging a bit more often.  Check in, y'all! Happy Friday!

Muslin: Round 2

I think this is the most fabric I've ever used in a single go.  I didn't believe it when I saw someone go through 2 bolts of muslin working on their wedding gown, but I can see how now.


I am really excited about how great this is looking and how well it is coming together. The draping was my biggest concern, because the entire dress is a Frankenpattern of sorts... Iteration 3 of the dress I found tucked away in the costume shop.  The original was ripped apart to have a second life as a pattern. It became Sunset, the red dress I ripped apart to use as a pattern when I realized its muslin was long gone. You see it above in the middle layer of the pattern sandwich, with muslin round one on top and length and a train added with mostly ignored guidance from Vogue 2788 on the bottom, augmented by newspaper.  It is crazy to think that the red piece is knee- length.  It's been a journey, friends.  But the finish line is in sight.


I spent 2 movies drafting the back, and another one drafting the front.  At that point, I started to cut, and we're looking at another movie and a half there.  Then there was the scary moment where I thought I didn't have enough fabric... because I ordered everything a month or so ago.  And so there was biting of nails until I laid everything out, and it was all gravy, but with 8 yards of 54" fabric, JUST barely. The laying out muslin pieces on pretty silk was all podcasts, but I think I listened to 3? So another hour?
I pinned all of my pieces in over the course of another 2 podcasts, but these were game shows and This American Life, so I think that's another almost 2 hours. They went together very quickly because of all the prep though, so just another hour and change.  Lake Woebegone and Ask Me Another.
This dress is a yardage monster, but I think it is worth every little bit.  It is also the most time I have spent on a single garment... If we add it up, to this point, that's 5.5 movies.  Let's just say they're each a little over 2 hours long. 2.25x5.5? 12.375... 12 hours and 20 minutes, ish.   Plus another 4.5 hours of podcasts.  And the pictures you're looking at are from a fitting session that was about an hour.  So... Let's round up and say 17 hours to that point.  Seventeen.

But it's worth it.
It is, after all, my wedding dress.

Muslin: round 1

S Jon graduated and I house-sat and a million other things got in the way of sewing... Which, I know, I know, can't be an excuse for much longer but look!

The pretty! Straight grain lines! Bust points in the right places! A really great line in the shoulder piece I just kinda guessed on. Huzzah! But...

Yep.  That's a big ole gap in center back. When it wasn't a gap before. I have theories... Fluctuating weight is certainly a contribution, but so is the fact that the only "support" in this version comes in the bra I'm wearing. Which, before you ask, will be built in on the real dress. If not this one then one very much like it.  

I'm waiting on a gap in my schedule and a giant table to occur in roughly the same time frame so that I can make the muslin of the whole dress, adding a good inch to both sides of the center back seam. I'm thinking next week... And I get my schedule soon so then I will know with some certainty. 

Today marks 6 months to the wedding, and my goal is to hang this up, all finished, on or before 4 months from now. Ready set GO! 

Sketching and photos

I'm modifying a dress I've made before. The original dress is one I made 5 years ago, based on one made in the fifties and the most finished(think guts) dress I have ever made. I tried it on and it fits! One step down. It fits pretty well, but with modifications I plan to make, I'm going to muslin the whole thing just to make sure, with absolute certainty, that I will have he best possible fit on my wedding day.  I'm making fewer changes in different ways than I thought I would after trying on dresses, and more in other ways.

The original dress was made in the fifties, and I chronicled a good chunk of the taking apart and grading up and altering the line in a series of posts, tagged Sunset. (Click here to see those.)

Here's the original in a selfie (taken a couple of weeks ago after 3 years... It still fits! Hallelujah!!): 

And here are my sketches. 

I'll be changing the straps so they are their own pieces, keeping all the volume, and adding length and a train. Pearl buttons and maybe some pearls at the neckline and shoulders.  Lace at the shoulders and along the hem if there's any at all. Dupioni silk. A pop of color in the petticoat. 

Now, to go through a bolt of muslin for the mock-ups. 

Are you ready? I'm ready. 

On wedding dress styles

When I went to my hometown for the day yesterday to look at some wedding reception places, I decided it was important to try on wedding dresses with my mom at least once. When I found out the place that I bought my senior prom dress from(did college application stuff instead of sewing it) is selling some wedding dresses these days, I knew it was the perfect kind of full circle.

We walked in and started flipping through racks of dresses and pulling all shapes and shades of white and textures- slinky satin, soft laces, a line dresses, with trains, without trains, with straps/cap sleeves, strapless, and, of course, all different levels of poufyness. I thought I knew what I wanted, so I tried on lots of dresses with less full skirts that were a bit fitted through the hips. We pulled a couple of "princess dresses" just to rule them out, and instead we ruled them in.  I thought I liked lace, and a little beading. Turns out I'm not all that crazy about a dress full of it, and i much prefer pearls to crystally things. Those were good and odd moments of clarity. 

What I discovered hadn't changed from the thoughts in my head: 

I want to be able to move in my wedding dress. Walk freely. Dance. Not worry about exposing myself. Find a way to incorporate old lace. 

It's food for thought to be sure. I'm thinking abut how to add some pouf and change up a neckline. Sketches soon. 

A BIG project

I am undertaking the biggest project I have to date because a man asked me a question. 

Jon asked me to marry him, and I said yes! 

And now, I am making my wedding dress. 

And because he promised not to peek, I get to share the journey with y'all! 

Getting married, I'm hoping, will make me a better chronicler of things, a better thank you note writer, and one more prepared for challenges ahead, and those are just the things I'm hoping will happen between now and November when we tie the knot. 

Yaaaay!

Now, let the planning begin. 

Words of wisdom, anyone?