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from a hot mess to the perfect dress...follow the adventure as the old lady and I attempt to make my wedding dress.







Monday, April 25, 2011

Round and Round We Go...

 I apologize that it's been a while since I've posted anything. There has been a whirlwind of emotions with both making this dress and planning a wedding in general. It's easy to lose sight of the fact that this whole experience is about Charlie and me celebrating the sacrament of marriage and moving forward with our new family--and although it will only include the two of us and our sweet labradoodle Teddy for a while, it will none-the-less be our family. And we couldn't be more excited! Now enough of the lame stuff...



The past few weeks have been full of ups and downs including days of feeling like I'm just running in circles exhausting myself and not getting anywhere. We spent about a week just pinning the lace to the silk pieces and I spent like 2 entire days messing with the fit of the bodice to the skirt because working with silk is so different from muslin. Just when I got to the point where I was wondering if I'm even good enough to do this or if it's worth it, the final lace samples came! The lace is AMAZING!! I'm sooo excited! Of course with my luck we will have to spend a whole lot of time piecing the lace together because the damask pattern of the re-embroidered French Alencon lace that I love, which itself is only 32'' wide, is naturally in a horizontal direction. I don't know many women who are delighted by horizontal patterns on their clothing and I'm no exception so we'll see what we can do to make it vertical.

pinning, and pinning, and pinning, and stay stitching (the sample)



The sequins look like a bit much, but I promise they're more subtle in person.

The pearls and bugle beads stand out more than the sequins.

LOVE the eyelash scallop trim we'll use!!!

The begining of the bodice marathon.
 When I first tried the dress there wasn't a zipper yet, and I still needed to fiddle with the fit, but I could tell that I do love what I'm doing and all of the frustrations will definitely be worth it. Regardless of how much I've pricked myself with the straight pins and wound up looking like I bathed 10 cats at one time (I even bled a little on the cream fabric.....shhhhhh...nothing a little peroxide and a q-tip can't fix) I'm having fun.
It's blurry and doesn't fit perfectly yet, but this is the best
picture you get. I'm probably not posting any
 more of me in the dress.


Of course it can't end with that. I ordered some samples for the final silk that came recently in the mail, and I don't know what these people were thinking but this is  NOT silk shantung. So now I have to search for something that is what I'm looking for and hope that it's reasonably priced. I'm thinking probably drapery fabric because I want that heavy weight and not the lighter weight of dupioni. I'm probably a little picky. But tough.

So finally I got the zipper in and got to try it on. I love it, but there are still minor changes to be made. I've been working on trimming scallops off of the sample lace to applique to the bodice. And I'm happy to say that I LOVE the new lace bodice! The back has a diamond-shaped cutout now, and I have to say it's a little sassy. Also, I inserted a 32'' width of lace that I pleated to fit in the center back of the skirt to create a cascade that I'm pretty excited about! This will allow us to have the train that I want with the small width of the final lace fabric. I'm really not a fan of math, which is funny because this whole thing kind of feels like the Universe's sick attempt at putting me though a word problem. Good news, Universe... I'm "Duh, winning".

Much better!!

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