busy weekend!

I feel so productive.  This weekend I had several things I wanted to get started on and I did them all!  I even went to the grocery and did some dishes too.

The most important thing I did this weekend:

That’s right, wedding invites are going in the mail tomorrow.  I planned on buying wedding invites until Melissa, Best Wedding Planner In The World, asked if I would be opposed to making them myself.  Once she put that seed into my mind I was all set!  I took a flower photo, traced it in Illustrator, gave it two fills and an outline, drew a map, wrote some text, and was done.  I printed and cut them myself then stuffed the invites Saturday while John printed the return address labels.  I printed front and back of all cards so that I didn’t have to deal with glue or borders or anything.  The envelopes didn’t look quite so dark when I ordered them online, but they worked out fine. John’s mom addressed them all beautifully!

Next project- rehearsal dinner dress.  I was going to do this last right before the wedding but I realized I should have something nice to wear to my work’s global sales meeting in a couple weeks.  I worked on it for an hour or two today; I wanted to get the pattern done so I’ll know how much silk I need to dye.  More photos when I finish it…

It looks yucky in this fabric (just for the fitting) and it doesn’t fit exactly on the mannequin, but it fits nicely on me and will be pretty in the silk I plan to use.  It’s going to have a funky twisty bubble hem, too.

The last thing I did today was get started on the ties for the groomsmen, dads, and John!  I’ll write about that when it’s not an hour past my bedtime.

my wedding dress

Apparently my blog has gotten so popular that I have dedicated readers (okay, one reader) that request more frequent posting.  Thanks, future sister-in-law!  You really know how to make a gal feel special… anything I can do to make the time at work pass faster is cool by me.  Lets get back on track though, shall we?  This post is supposed to be about my wedding dress.

I don’t ever remember deciding to make my own dress; it was more of a given.  Why buy something when you can make exactly what you want for cheaper?  I ain’t gonna lie; most people will probably think my dress is a little weird.  John and I aren’t especially traditional and I’ve always hated wearing white!  Without further delay, lets go through the process of dying the fabrics and a little of the sewing.

So that you don’t think, “Gee, that Christy, she really has her stuff together.  She does all of these time-consuming projects while working full time, taking care of her loving fiance and keeping house.”  This is what my kitchen looked like while I started this crazy wedding dress.  I feel like I should redeem myself and mention that we cleaned ALL DAY yesterday and everything is spotless.  We even swiffered the bathroom ceiling and washed the sofa upholstery.

For my dress, I did a gradation from the bridesmaid dress color to the base fabric- natural off-white silk.  The dye process is very similar to the bridesmaid dress but it requires a little math and careful pouring.

Yes, that’s my bare kitchen counter… I didn’t spill anything in the grout!  

Ooh, pretty.  See the color shift?

I think I did 10 shades for the ruffles that vary in width from 5″ wide or so at the hem up to 1.5″ at the neckline.

The above photo shows my silk ruffles after they came out of the dryer, all tangled and pretty.  The color isn’t especially accurate.  

Here’s the top of my dress laid out with the ruffles.  It’s really not that dark at the bottom!

This is a close-up of the construction of the ruffles.  Each edge was burned then dusted off with a brush, then the raw edge was sewn on the way it should lay, flipped up and sewn again, then ironed flat.  This way both edges are clean and they can flop wherever they want without showing any ugliness.

I have the ruffles between the waist and hips to sew on, but then I’m done with 95% of the dress!  I just have to wait and make sure it still fits me closer to the big day.  I’ve been growing lately so we’ll see.  I might also tack down the ruffles in a few places on the bodice so they don’t flip up at our outdoor ceremony.