Sewing a Wedding Dress

Week 3 of My Sis­ter’s Wed­ding Dress

Last week was packed full of work, projects & fun! Again I’m find­ing it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to sit down and write a full post to guide you through week 3 of the wed­ding dress build. But here goes…

First, I fin­ished stitch­ing the hem using a rolled hem­ming foot. I typ­i­cal­ly hand stitch my hems, but due to lack of time and the silk being cov­ered by the silk under­lay, I opt­ed to use the sewing machine. I’m glad I did because it saved me lots of time and the results were beautiful!

Next I laid out the lace and care­ful­ly cut the pieces out with a rotary cut­ter and mat. (This is where I’m glad I invest­ed in an extra large cut­ting board! You can get them for a real­ly good price on Ama­zon here!)

At first, I could­n’t decide if I want­ed to serge the lace edges or not. I knew that the serge edges would at strength to the lace seams, but it would also add a dark white line run­ning along the seams.

I decid­ed to serge the waist­band seams and back seams. (If I could go back, I would do a long zig zag stitch instead of serged edges… the white serged seam stands out too much.)

Then, I stitched all the pieces togeth­er, tacked the lace to the silk in places and hand stitched lace at the zipper.

 Below: Katie had her first fit­ting! Fin­gers were crossed that it fit!

Sad­ly, it was not a per­fect fit 🙁 First, I need­ed to take it in (more) at the hips.
This alter­ation was­n’t dif­fi­cult, but is was a pain to take out & put back in the stay stitches/tacks to take in the side seams. I guess that is what hap­pens when you have to rush through the process and skip fit­tings (because the bride-to-be is away )!

But the biggest alter­ation to be made and obsta­cle to over­come was the dress length. At the first fit­ting (the mock-up), we decid­ed to keep the dress on the longer side to give it more ele­gance  and flow (and I also thought she would wear some type of heels). Well the dress end­ed up being much too long! It was almost impos­si­ble for her to walk in with­out trip­ping on the lace in front. The silk under lay­er was fine, but the front lace con­sis­tent­ly got caught in Kate’s toes.

I tried to get my sis­ter to change her mind and wear heels, but she did not budge. Her argu­ment was, “Why would I wear heels now, on the most impor­tant day of my life, when I won’t be able to stand/walk straight with­out shak­ing?”  Ok- she was right! But I was­n’t sure how I could alter the length of the lace???

We decid­ed the only way to do this (with­out dri­ving north for more lace fab­ric) was to cut and re-hem the front of the silk under­lay, then roll under the lace at the front. At first, I was very dis­ap­point­ed that things result­ed to this and that we lost most of the beau­ti­ful lace trim at the bot­tom, but ulti­mate­ly it turned out very nice­ly! In fact, I may even like it bet­ter this way, since it empha­sizes the train in the back more.

I don’t want to leave you hang­ing, but I don’t want to show any­more pic­tures of the skirt until she is mar­ried. I have fam­i­ly read­ing this and want to leave some sur­prise for them on her wed­ding day 🙂

This week: Fin­ish­ing the silk top for the wed­ding dress, Fin­ish­ing the “new” brides­maid dress, & pat­tern­ing the moth­er of the bride dress.

Com­ing up next: