My Wedding Dress: The Big Reveal

Here is finally the moment you all have waited for. I'm going to share my wedding dress with you. As the pictures were taken on my actual wedding day (who would guess) it turned out I didn't have that many that really show of my dress or only show me without my blog-shy husband. So I did some cropping, but hope you will enjoy the photographs anyway.

There are no photographs without the bolero because I was wearing it the whole day. When I tried it on initially the lace felt a bit itchy and stiff but on the day I didn't feel uncomfortable in it. It also made the whole outfit look much more bridal.

My bouquet, as well as the buttonhole flowers for the men and the roses for my hair, were flown in from Germany. My mum brought them with her the day before the wedding and I think we were all a bit worried that they would get damaged or welt. The bouquet is vintage inspired and has three hydrangeas and some roses in it. The stems are wrapped in lace and bound with some ribbon.

Most photographs were taken from my right side and so it is difficult to actually see the flowers that I hand stitched to the left side. They were flowing down to the train.

My hair was braided on one side and then arranged to a curly bun. The roses were the same as in my husbands buttonhole flowers. 

Thanks again to everybody who encouraged me to keep the train. It felt amazing to have it swoosh behind me all day. I loved it so much I didn't take it up at all. The train has some grass stains on it but otherwise held up very well - no rips. I've given the dress to the dry cleaners already so fingers crossed they got the stains out.

I also made our ring cushion with the fabrics from my dress.

We had some gas filled heart shaped balloons that we released into the sky. They all carried well wishes from friends written on postcards with our address and stamps on it. If they are found, somebody might send them back to us. Lets see, so far none has arrived.

Our wedding day was an amazing day. Full of emotions, laughter and joy. It went so fast and if I wouldn't have the photos and wedding band on my finger I might doubt it actually happened. We are just back from an amazing honey moon in Corfu and live settles back into its usual routine. It means there will be time for me to sew and knit again and actually think about my autumn wardrobe. Have you started with your autumn sewing or are you still holding on to the last sunshine of summer?

Wedding Dress Progress Part V: Hand sewing and Finishing up

I'm DONE!!! Yeah, I finished my wedding dress and lace bolero a month in advance and I'm veryyyy happy with the outcome. So today's post will be the last one before the big reveal on my wedding day :) I'm mostly showing you detail shots - enjoy.

First the zip: I was very afraid of sewing the zip, as I hadn't put in a lapped zip before. Add the chiffon and the thought you are sewing your wedding dress - welcome in my world! In the end I managed with the help of very good friend (thanks Thea) who stayed with me a whole Saturday and kept calming me down. We used the free Craftsy tutorial from Sunni (thanks for your recommendation Claire!) and followed it step by step. To stabilise the chiffon I used the thinnest fusible non-woven interfacing I had - I didn't want it to show on the outside. We basted all seams before stitching. I think the result is not bad :)

I hadn't pulled the zip up completely. So there is no gap in real life.

The bodice fits tight and I didn't want the whole strain to be on the zipper. Thus I stitched a bra clasp and hook into the dress. To do so, I bought a bra extender which I cut in half and then sewed to the lining on the inside of the dress with a zigzag stitch. On the pictures the lining is folded away from the chiffon:

I then hand stitched the lining to the zipper leaving a big gap where the bra extender is. To close the dress you have to first close the "bra" and then pull up the zipper. On the next photo on the right the hook part is protruding from the dress. The eye part is hidden between lining and chiffon on the left.

The straps were attached to the back bodice as one of the last steps. That means you can see them on the inside but I don't mind. Adding them last meant I could adjust the fit of the dress before hemming it. I sealed the end of the ribbon with some clear nail vanish. I was worried it would scratch but it doesn't.

I always wanted to have flowers on my dress. They had to be very delicate to match the chiffon. I found some embroidered mesh flowers on ebay. They came as a 4m long trim from China. The flowers have a little pearl in their center and although not from great quality look super nice.

I've handstitched them along the bust band on top of the ribbon and then they are flowing down one side and are all over the train.

There are about 100 of them and it took me almost 2 weeks to sew them on. I told myself to attach at least 10 each evening and it wouldn't be that bad. The most difficult part was to attach them to the bust band and not catching the lining.

The hem was the next difficult part. I only found the shoes to go with the dress a couple of days before the hem had to be done (thanks Thea). Again it took a whole afternoon, loads of tea and loads of standing on books to get it done. I can only recommend to put straps on their right position before starting to work on the hem!

A flower on the train.

because the chiffon and silk are so delicate I decided to go for a 2-thread rolled hem that I put in with my overlocker. The rolled hem of the chiffon is white as well and matches the flowers. The lining is about 0.5 cm shorter than the chiffon.

Next, I needed a bustle. There are several different types and I went for the simplest one as for the other styles the dress had not enough layers. In my case we attached ribbon to the hem of the chiffon and lining and then a little ring onto the lining at the height of my bum.

After the ceremony the train can be bound up by just threading the ribbon through the hook and tying it, voila. In case you wonder how I will prevent the ribbons from showing when the train is down: there will be a seam ripper at my wedding :) and it will be used to remove the basting from the ribbon. The ribbon will be basted to the seams - I haven't done that yet - it's only three ribbons.

To make the dress look a bit more bridal, I sewed a white lace cardigan. It's the pattern from Kwik Sew (K3400 - here is the link to my inspiration post). I made a muslin first and added some length to the bolero and removed some curve/fullness from the front panel.

I bought 1 meter of mesh lace from ebay and found a trim for finishing the raw seams at a local haberdashery. I was all positive about it and had no worries at all about sewing with lace. Then I read on the internet how difficult it is to sew lace especially mesh lace. I procrastinated a couple of weeks and then just plunged ahead.

It took me only one afternoon to finish the bolero and had no problems at all. I used my 1/4" (quilting) foot to sew the seams with a straight stitch at length setting 1.8. The advantage of this foot is that it has a small hole through which the needle goes (I don't have/ didn't need a special needle plate). To finish the seam I sewed a tiny zigzag stitch 1/8" away from the first stitching line and then cut the seam allowance away. What really helped to start sewing was to sew a couple of stitches on some scrap cotton and then start on the lace.

Final thoughts: You can't believe how relieved I am to have finished the wedding dress. I have been sewing it since April and spent almost every weekend on it. It was a very stressful and at times desperate journey. The wedding dress was all I could think about. I couldn't do anything else because I would have a bad conscience.
I am very happy with the end result - I have my dream dress - and I'm very proud of all my hard work, but I wouldn't do it again :) The groom to be summarised it with the following words: The last couple of month were all about the dress but not about the actual wedding.

I learned a lot when making the dress and so far it is the most advanced garment I have ever made. It is beautiful and I feel beautiful in it. So I can't wait to actually put it on and say yes :)

Thanks a lot for your support and know I have started to make every day clothes again (without having a bad conscience). So you can expect to see the usual pre-wedding dress stuff on this blog again.

Wedding Dress Progress Part IV: Sewing Silk and Assembling Skirt and Bodice

Good news: THE dress finally looks like a dress! Skirt and bodice are attached (including the lining), flowers are hand sewn on and the zipper has been inserted, yeah. The only thing missing now is the hem and bustle! I can't show you the full dress before I get married (6 weeks to go, so be patient), so I'm showing you some detail shots instead.

This post will be mainly about my experience when working with silk. I used the silk for the lining, but forgot to take pictures of it. So here are some random pics :)

The skirt is without the lining in this photo. 

The silk didn't like me at all and I didn't like it either because there were a couple of hiccups on the way from silk to skirt.

1. Should you decide to gelantin bath your silk - fold it before putting it into the bucket. Otherwise you will have a wrinkly mess that takes a long time to iron. I had to iron with steam and because it took so long, the steam was condensing on the metal of my iron board and from there dripping onto my silk. Water stains!

2. If there is any writing on the selvage of the silk (like 100% silk for example) try to cut if off before the gelantin bath because it could stain you fabric. Mine did. But luckily with the chiffon layer on top you can't see it.

Assembled bodice with straps! Yes my dress is having straps, because otherwise it would fall down. There is not enough boning in there to hold it up.

3. I decided to cut my lace single layered and layed it out in front of the window. Having cut out the first piece, I realised that my silk had a purple or white shimmer depending from which side I looked. I was fretting for 2 hours about it and then found out that if you layed out the fabric the other way around the shimmer didn't change. So when looking towards the window it would always shimmer purple and when looking towards the room it shimmers always white, phew.

4. Make sure you have enough fabric - I was short 2 meters - I was just missing the last piece. And pay attention how you lay your pattern pieces down. Ups, I was just frolicking about what else I could do with that lovely leftover silk, when I realised I had layed out my pattern piece the wrong side up. I only realised when I had cut 3/4 of it. Why not earlier?

when sewing silk - use loads of pins!

5. Finally sewing! I pinned every 1" and I don't think it was enough because my seams are twisting. It doesn't show that much because I can iron it out with some steam. I french seamed all seams (silk and chiffon) and my first seam was 3/8" and my second/last one 1/4". To get a neat 1/4" I bought a 1/4" foot which has a little guide on it. I can only recommend it. It made sewing these thin seams much easier.

My 1/4'' foot - I can only highly recommend it!

Now back to the dress construction: Before I attached the chiffon skirt or silk skirt to the bodices, I washed them both to remove any starch or gelatin. I was worried about having any residues left so I did a two hours soak first and then but them (separately) into the handwashing program of my washing machine. I didn't wash the bodice to avoid getting soggy pleats.

I couldn't decide how I would attach the skirt to the bodice. My pattern suggested to first sew outer skirt fabric and lining together and then attach it to the bodice. But that meant the zipper would show on the inside. Why would you use a lining then? The lining is supposed to cover the zipper. So I sewed the outer skirt fabric to the bodice outer fabric and then I sewed the skirt lining to the bodice lining.

handstitched ribbon

Before the zipper could go in, I had to hand stitch the satin ribbon in place. It has the same color as the straps. I attached it on top of the underbust seam and when attaching it with tiny back stitches took care to only catch the outer fabric and not the lining.

I pinned and stitched the ribbon onto the dress when having it on the dress form - just to make sure the dress was falling straight. 

One last pic: The dress with it's complete lining and ribbon attached.

I'm so glad that I decided to add a train. I love it :) So thanks to everybody who encouraged me to do so. I still have to figure out how to add the bustle so that I can take the train up when we are at the restaurant.

You can't imagine how excited I am. Only six more weeks to go and I will be Mrs :) Make-up and hair have been sorted out, phew. We also had our pre-wedding meeting with the registrar which left me more confused and anxious then before.

I'm hoping to get the next post up a bit sooner now that most of the sewing is done. In case you wonder, no I'm not working on anything else other than the wedding dress, its lace bolero, ring cushion and pouch. So plenty to do! I would love to sew some dresses especially because I'm seeing all your lovely ones. But that has to wait - so keep posting and help me over my no-summer-dress-sewing.

Wedding Dress Progress Part III: Constructing the bodice

Disclaimer: This post is a pure construction post with no pretty pictures. I've tried to put some more detail into the construction of the bodice in the hope that it might help somebody else when making a structured dress. At least I struggled a lot with deciding what to do.

Another month has passed since my last Wedding Dress Progress Update! Two more month to go before everything has to be ready. I'm making good progress with the dress:

The bodice is assembled, voila!

It consists of 5(!) layers:

1. Pleated chiffon shell

2. Silk dupion underlining for the chiffon shell.

3. Cotton batting with sewn-in bra cups.

4. Old bed sheet with boning to which the cotton batting is attached.

5. Silk lining.

It took me a while to decide in which order and which way around to stack layer 3 and 4. So here are a few more details on the bodice assembly.

I hand basted the pleated chiffon to the silk dupion bodice pieces with silk thread and then sewed the bodice pieces together (layer 1 and 2). 

Right side of silk lining (top) and chiffon pleats basted to silk dupion (bottom)

Wrong side of silk lining (top) and chiffon pleats basted to silk dupion (bottom)

Following the tutorial from sewaholic, I made a cotton batting layer just for the three front pieces (the ones connected by the princess seams). To avoid fabric bulk at the princess seams, you have to cut off the seam allowances and then stitch the side and front panel together on top of twill tape. I bought simple sew-in bra cups from amazon and after a bit of trial and error managed to get a good placement of the cups on the batting. I sewed all the way around the cups with a zig zag stitch to secure them.

Right side of cotton batting with bra cups (top) and bed sheet with boning (bottom)

Wrong side of cotton batting with bra cups (top) and bed sheet with boning (bottom)

Then I constructed the "old bed sheet" bodice which I wanted to use to underline my silk lining. I added the boning to this layer because it was the most stable one. I had to make the princess seams for this (and the silk lining) a bit smaller, because they are on the inside of the bra cups. Next I stitched the cotton batting to the bed sheet layer.

Boning attached to the bed sheet layer.

Close up on bra cups sewn onto cotton batting

I then sewed the bodice a fifth time - this time from silk to make the lining. The assembled silk bodice got attached to the bed sheet layer as well. Now the bed sheet layer was sandwiched between cotton batting and silk. I hand stitched the cup of the silk lining to the bed sheet bodice by stitching in the seam line of the princess seams.

Stitches in the seam line of princess seams to secure lining to bra cups.

Close-up of all layers sewn together.

Construction wise the most challenging part for me was to attach and position the bra cups. The boning was very easy to put in. I was contemplating for a while to add some horse hair braid to stabilise the neckline but decided against it. Because there were already 5 fabric layers at the neck seam line and I didn't want to add more bulk.

I first trimmed the batting.

Finally I stitched all bodice layers at the neckline together. To make sure I had a nice crisp and flat neckline seam, I graded the different layers at the seam during trimming before understitching. And voila here we have a really structured bodice. Despite being stable I do not trust it to not slip down thus I've added ribbon straps to have some security :)

Trimmed and graded seams at neckline seam.

Neatly understitched and trimmed neckline seam.

Understitches on the right side of the neckline seam. Pretty ribbon straps have been attached as well.

Are you still with me? Well done! Then let me tell you what to expect in the next progress post: the assembly of the dress and lining and first hand stitching :)

One question, please: Does the train have to be lined? My lining has a train :O And do you have any experiences with bustles? Any tutorial you can recommend? Thank you.

Wedding Dress Progress Part II: Pleating Chiffon and Sewing the Chiffon Skirt

Are you already wondering if I make any progress on my wedding dress?! I've started too and it helps that I have forbidden myself to sew anything else until it is finished. I still have 3 month time, but can feel a bit of pressure already.

Excuse my untidy sewing room and focus on the pinned dress please!

At least the dress is now my mean concern as we have sorted out the restaurant, photographer, bouquet, hair and make-up. It will be a beautiful day and I will be hopefully wearing my dream dress.

Progress so far:

I've sewn the chiffon skirt with mini french seams. Before cutting the chiffon, I sprayed it with starch and ironed it dry. It worked beautifully and made the chiffon crisp. So I had no problems sewing the tiny french seams. Because of the starch the dress has no drape at the moment. I hope it will wash out easily.

(I would recommend you remove the starch spray bottle from the bathroom after you are done, otherwise you might confuse it with hair spray in the morning. But I can attest that starch gives your hair a really good hold - for the whole day.)

I've pleated the center front piece. It took me four tries. The problem was that although the pleats looked ok, the center piece didn't had the right size suggesting that my pleats weren't even. So I tried different methods to mark the pleats:  I tried twice to use tailor tucks to mark the pleats and then I tried with a fabric pen and ruler to draw lines.

a mess of tailor tucks - didn't help.

Both methods should have guarantied accuracy, but still the piece was too small. Chiffon is not the best material to be pleated because it is still slippery even after starch treatment. To stabilise it I fused the thinnest fusible interfacing I had to the chiffon before cutting out and it is now really nice and even.

Left: chiffon stabilised with fusible interfacing. Right: not stabilised. Can you see the size difference?

I've gelatin bathed the silk, gasp, to make it less slippery (I was not sure if I could use starch and other bloggers made good experiences with the gelatin. I can only recommend that you fold your fabric before bathing it because otherwise you have a crumbly mess that you can't entangle when wet because the silk might tear. After drying the silk felt stiff like a board and was a mess of folds. I've managed to iron most of them out and the silk is still in one piece. Now the bad news: I'm not having enough to cut the back panel with the train. That's because initially I didn't want a train and thus bought less. But I'm pretty confident that I will be able to get more in Goldhawk Road (that's where I bought it). Now the question: should I cut into the silk now or wait until I have more?

Silk on the ironing board: Left ironed and right, obviously, not.

Together with a very motivating friend (wink Charlie) I pinned the parts of the dress on my dress form. It looks really nice, especially with the lace mesh flowers and ribbon. I'm thinking about sewing a lace cardigan with the lace you can see.

I've bought horsehair braid, boning and bra cups. Everything will go in the tiny bodice to stabilise it. I'm really scared of sewing these in. Especially because I've never sewn with any of these before. But with the long bank holiday ahead I will hopefully be able to tackle them!

PS: I'm sorry for the bad picture quality, but work in progress means mobile phone photos!