Wedding Dress–Prep & Cutting

Tips – Prep

-Clean Up! Because wedding dresses are (usually) white, it’s imperative your sewing room is cleaned of excess color thread and velvet fluff. No one wants flecks of color sewn into their dress!

-Cover ironing/pressing board with clean white (or natural) muslin. Even a brand new or unstained color cover can potentially mess with white fabric. Besides, who wants to put a new cover on every time you sew on white? While we’re on the subject of ironing board protection, if you’ve never used a pressing cloth, now is the time! (I would have saved my stays a stain if I had taken my own advice!)

-Clean the iron as well! When is the last time you’ve cleaned your iron? Yeah, if you’re like me, it’s been a while! Clean the sole plate (this thread has a lot of tips), but I find that rubbing with a damp cloth and then running over a crumpled sheet of tin foil does the trick. Don’t forget to clean the inside, as well! (Vinegar works wonders)

-Swap to a new needle. Really, you should do this for every new project, but it’s especially important when sewing on delicate silks to have a brand-new needle of the appropriate size. (Here’s a good article about different types of sewing machine needles.)

-Wash up! It may seem trivial, but wash your hands. It probably is a bit excessive to wash your hands every 30 minutes, but do be sure to wash after eating, painting the house, petting the resident cat and/or dog.

-Speaking of our furry friends……Most seamstresses I know have at least one furry mascot hanging out in the sewing room. I’m not going to the extreme of completely kicking my dogs out of the room, but do be careful that they don’t maul the fabric! I’ll be doing fittings and storing the gown in a separate (closed door) room.

-Sharpen up. If your scissors or rotary cutter are dull, you’ll be tearing your hair out dealing with silk and chiffon. It’s not worth the pain, buy a new rotary blade, or sharpen scissors.

-Cutting. Taffeta, chiffon and basically all silk products are a crazy pain to work with. Usually when starting projects, I’ll cut out all the pieces I need at the very beginning, but since there are so many factors into keeping the fabric clean, as un-frayed as possible, etc., I’ll be cutting out only the pieces I need at the time. It takes longer, but is worth the headache of taming the wild silk fraymonster.

Wedding Dress

My client didn’t like some elements of the dress, so it’s back to square one.  Thankfully, I can salvage the skirt (I hope), and the bodice takes relatively little fabric, so I am hoping I can get it done without forking out any more money for fabric.

Wish me luck!

Wedding Dress Bodice

Ok, it’s been a long day, but the bodice is constructed!  (Hooray!)

The bodice has a gathered sheer overlay, and I absolutely hated gathering anything until I learned the cord trick!

For the easiest gathering you’ve ever done in your life, zig-zag stitch over a thin cord; then zip!  pull the cord and evenly distribute the gathers.  Easy-peasy!  I don’t mind gathering as much now, it’s so easy.  Just be sure not to catch the cord!  (Even if you do snag the cord, you can unpick the stitch and is usually OK)

Here’s the chiffon overlay pinned at the seams and center to the lining, before the gathers…..

Not very sexy, right?  Oh but wait!  here’s the gathers pinned in place….looking better, no?  (alas, Bertha is about 3 sizes to big for this teeny dress, so her bewbies don’t match up to the bust curve, and makes it look kinda funny……also, my panniers are still on there…..I need to show them to you guys eventually!)

After all that, I zig-zagged the edge, being careful not to catch the cord.  I set the pleats with basting stitches about an inch away from the edge. 

This is super importante – if you don’t don’t this step, gathers can be pulled out of place when sewing seams.  This is another “a-ha” trick that I finally learned after years of hating pleats!

After that, I pulled the cord out.  (I caught it a couple of times and had to snip a thread or two – no biggie!)  Then, I constructed the lining and sewed the top edge (inserting the straps first).  I pressed up the seam allowance and stitched to the lining side, clipping the seam allowances close.

And here is the fruits of my sporadic labor – a nearly completed bodice!  Ugh, I should re-take the picture instead of constantly apologizing for them, but yeah, the straps aren’t tensioned evenly….the bodice isn’t actually baggy on one side!  (If I remember, tomorrow I’ll re-take the pic……)

Here’s a view of the side…..My favorite pic thus far!  Mmm….makes me want a chemise dress with all sheer gathers!  (Oddly enough, the original inspiration for this design has a distinctly chemise gown flair with ruffles around the neckline!  Huh, I had never thought of that until now!)

And only for posterities sake, here’s the back.  Poor Bertha needs to go on a diet!  (Actually, the gal this is for is positively tiny!)

Oh, also of note, because I will only have ONE fitting with her, I’m leaving the shoulder straps unconnected to the back, so I can adjust as needed and hand-sew them in place after a fitting.

I think I can get this finished (other than hem and final fitting) in 1-2 more sessions of hardcore sewing. 

That is if I can keep of the computer long enough………

Wedding Dress update, and another tip

If you’re working on fabric (like silk) that tends to suck down into the throat plate of your sewing machine when starting a seam, start sewing on a firmer fabric, then without cutting the thread, run onto the fabric to be seamed.

Also, I’m really wishing I had one of these pairs of scissors right now.  (No, my sewing gadgetry collection is not complete, despite any evidence to the contrary!)

As you can see in my first picture, I’m seaming some pretty squirrely silk chiffon (I hates you my precioussssss).  I’m going to be French seaming at least the very topmost layer (why yes, I hate it so much, I’m going to sew on it TWICE).  Anyway, so, why the applique scissors are helpful is when it comes to trimming seam allowances.  I usually cut the seam allowances before pressing, but with applique scissors, you can press over the seam allowance, and use the leaf-shaped applique scissors to neatly snip close to the seam without fear.  Awesome, right?!  If I had a pair, I’d show you what I’m talking about. 

A lot of blabbing to say, yeah, one can never have too many specialty tools!

But what you really want to know about is how I’m coming along on the dress, right? 

I’ve sent pictures to the client, and I’m hoping she likes where I’m going with it.  The bodice is ending up a bit higher than on the original inspiration picture, but that may not actually be a bad thing.

Another thing I need to find out from her is about the lining….the chiffon is pretty dang sheer – and I’d like to at least 3/4 line.  I can’t tell, but that may also be deviating from the original, but since I only have a couple of small photos to go from, it is hard to tell.

Onto the pictures!  (The pictures themselves are actually quite nice today, however, my excuses now have to do with the skirt….its only roughly pinned in place, and will be gathered properly when the time comes!)

		Wedding dress progress VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I’m nearly at my stopping point for today since there is relatively little I can do until I hear back from my client, but that’s probably a good thing, I’m really beat!  Besides, it’s quickly coming up to zipper time, and I’ll need ALL my strength for that…..I hate zippers infinitely more than gathering…………

Headbands going up on Etsy…..eventually

If you want one before I go through and get them all loaded*, let me know!

		Headbands VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

*I want to photograph them properly and see if I can find someone to model them.

Hmmmm…..opinions??

I’m thinking of starting an Etsy store to support my costuming habit (at least a little bit).

Question #1 – What should I name my store?  Any opinions?  My top choices are already taken (of course), and I’m running low on the creativity at the moment.

Question #2 – Should I have one store, mixing crafting and costuming together or two separate stores?  (I don’t know a lot about Etsy, so this may not even be possible.)

I’m going to start on the costuming front by cleaning out my closet and posting things that I don’t need any longer/no longer fit.

I have a few crafting things to throw up there, too:

Three headbands leftover from Emma’s Easter outfit:

		Headbands VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

And a goofy little gift card ‘purse’, also from materials left over from the Easter project….

		Giftcard purse VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

Quick Headband Tutorial

Take one cheap headband, and some ribbon slightly wider than said cheap headband.

I’m going to be putting a bow on the side, so that’s where I’m going to do my join.  So, you’ll need to measure how much ribbon (doubled) is needed to cover the headband.

Stitch right up next to the each edge of the ribbon, making a little casing.  I folded the ribbon in half so the nice folded edge will be at the ends of the headband.

Now you’ve got a covered headband, but there is still an unsightly join to deal with.  You can cover it with a big flower, a bow, or just wrap it with a ribbon.

I stitched down the bow, and then used the center “knot” to wrap completely around the headband and hide the join on the inside as well.

And here it is, modeled by one of the people who happened to be in my sewing room today.  Thanks, Michelle!

Easter Dress

Apart from the hem, the Easter Extravaganza is complete!  I’m not terribly happy with the way the sleeves turned out, but overall, it’s a fairly good attempt, methinks.  If I lived in California, I would have bugged my cousin Jessica to help me with this project….I’m not sure what I could have done to make it better, but all I know is she does it way better than I. 

Speaking of my cousin, you should go check out her blog, it’s fabulous!  She’s insanely crafty – in a way I’ll never be!

The lighting is really quite bad in this pic – I’ll replace it tomorrow when there is sun out.  The crazy orange thing is a headband I made….

The button in the middle of the mum says “Cute as a Button”.  The headband was super-easy to make, and I think I’m going to make more, since the headbands came in a package of five, and honestly, I’m never going to use them for anything else!

I was running out of steam at this point, but I managed to line a basket, and hot glue (yes, HOT GLUE) some of the same headband flowers to the sides of the basket.  It needs something more – but I think I may need to sleep on it.