WEEK 2: My Sister’s Silk and Lace Wedding Dress Progress

It’s crunch time! 

A lit­tle over 3 weeks until the wed­ding and  I am swamped with work (both legal and sewing)! But, I hope to accom­plish all the projects: wed­ding dress, brides­maid dress, moth­er of the bride dress, and father of the bride out­fit (jack­et and/or pants).

Because I don’t have much time to write, I will basi­cal­ly share the wed­ding dress­mak­ing sto­ry through pic­tures (with a few tips and com­ments along the way). Sorry 🙁

This week:

(1) Adjust­ed the pat­tern at the hips

(2) Preshrunk silk

(3) Cut the 100% silk taffeta/charmeuse (I’m not entire­ly sure what you would call the silk we bought for the skirt underlay)

(4) Built the silk skirt

Unfor­tu­nate­ly my dritz wash­able mark­ing pen dried out on me, so I used a light blue chalk to trace my pat­tern onto the silk.

TIP: I DON’T cut on folds or through 2 lay­ers when I cut silk. Instead I pin down the pat­tern or use heavy weights/bricks to keep the silk from mov­ing. Luck­i­ly this silk was thick­er and not too slip­pery! How­ev­er the silk charmeuse (BUTTERY fab­ric) we bought for the top of the dress will be extreme­ly slip­pery, so these tricks will be espe­cial­ly help­ful for that cut!

After cut­ting all the skirt pieces (pan­els, godet, and waist­band pieces), I inter­faced and serged the edges of all the pieces.

We decid­ed not to inter­face and line the entire skirt due to: lack of time, lim­it­ed mon­ey, silk being cov­ered by lace and like­ly hot tem­per­a­tures in the chapel. How­ev­er,  I decid­ed to inter­face the edges of the godet and pan­els. (Inter­fac­ing would add more strength & sta­bil­i­ty to the seams.) Also, I ful­ly inter­faced and lined the waist­band pieces.

If I could go back, I’d def­i­nite­ly do things dif­fer­ent­ly (when inter­fac­ing the edges). Some seams are a bit puck­ered (this could change after I steam the dress). Per­haps I could’ve used a dif­fer­ent inter­fac­ing, skipped inter­fac­ing, inter­faced the entire skirt, or used very nar­row inter­fac­ing strips.

Well, it’s not worth stress­ing over because the silk will be cov­ered in lace! 🙂

Next, I stitched all the pieces togeth­er & insert­ed the godet (train-like piece in the back).

Last­ly, I bast­ed and stitched in the back invis­i­ble zipper.

Here’s what we have so far!

(My sis­ter is out of town so I had to fit the skirt piece…she is about 2″ taller than me and thin­ner, so the skirt is a bit tight and long in the pho­tos here.)

Next Step:

Fin­ish­ing the silk hem & sewing the lace overlay.

The process will be sim­i­lar to the silk skirt, but there won’t be any inter­fac­ing to fuse and the lace will have to be hand stitched to the skirt at the zipper.

After attach­ing the lace over­lay, I’ll be able to fin­ish lin­ing the waistband.