recap part 3: bridesmaids’ dresses

You might remember from this post that I made the bridesmaids’ dresses as well as the flower girl dresses.  I wanted them to be easy to fit as none of the 5 ladies wearing the dresses lived close to me.  They also needed to be affordable, and I wanted them to be able to wear them again.  I’m not sure if the girls have worn them again, but at least it’s an option!

I made my friend Kelley’s dress first because she is the closest to my size (I mean, people ask if we’re sisters all the time.  Or cousins.  Or once, if she’s my mom.  That person was really confused.)  It was easiest to fit it to myself, her body double, then alter it for the other two girls.  All I really needed was a measurement around above the chest, the strap length, and center front length.  The pattern (I would get it out if I wasn’t glued to my sofa right now) consisted of 3 pieces and some measurements on how big to make the circle for the dress body.

Picture comments:  1.  Here it is on me after I made it but before it was hemmed.

2.  various views of the bridesmaids, plus the bride and groom.

3.  the flower girls.  These were the hardest because I did not give them enough room to grow, and couldn’t fit them in person very well.  As you can see both dresses are a little small- the straps especially are riding up.  I was able to hem them right before the wedding so the length is alright.

4.  the bridal party… in disguise.  I didn’t ask anyone if they minded being on this blog but figured since no one really reads it, they will allow it.

5.  me and 3 of my favorite ladies in the world.

I like how the dresses turned out.  Everyone was comfortable, everyone matched in a roundabout way, and we didn’t have to spend tons of money.  I actually want to make one for myself now that I’m expecting my first child… how lovely to be able to wear something for the next 6 months without worrying about fit.  We’ll see if I get around to it though; I have such a huge project backlog that we’ll be lucky to finish the little person’s room before probably he/maybe she comes.  I’ll be writing more very soon!

Liz’s wedding dress

My coworker and friend Liz asked if I could make her wedding dress earlier this year.  As this was in the middle of my wedding planning I told her that I could start on her gown in the middle of August for her October wedding, and she said that she could wait!  I like a challenge and she knew exactly what she wanted.  

Luckily, Liz is very close to sample size so I was able to work off my college blocks.  The fitting process was pretty easy, then we drove up to LA with her mom and bought some really beautiful embroidered silk chiffon.  I used the same fabric I used for my dress for the under layer and the lining.  After one last minute batch of alterations due to wedding-stress-shrinkage, we were good to go!

The dress has a deep V with a little tiny cap sleeve, a band around the waist and a slight mermaid silhouette with front and back godets for fullness.  I hid the invisible zip on the side because I don’t like how most wedding dresses open up at center back.  Instead the back had a mostly decorative keyhole button and loop.

first sample

second fitting, work in progress

fitting in my tiny kitchen

cutting the godets

closeup of two layers and godets

work in progress

neckline

back view

one point underbustle

closeup

the week before the wedding

happy!

sassy with the red shoes

back view

before the ceremony

before the ceremony

the dark points are the bustle loop and ties

one last look before the ceremony

introducing andy and liz!

I can’t explain why my photos are rotating themselves because when I uploaded them, they were correct. Same goes for the big photo… maybe I can fix it later when I have more patience.  Professional photos taken by Alvaro Quiala.

recap part 2: wedding dress

I am very glad I made my own dress for my wedding.  As far as I can tell it wasn’t even more stressful to make it than buy a dress after hearing about poor quality and fitting horror stories from a couple friends this summer.  At least I had no one else but myself to get mad at if it turned out poorly.  I was comfortable and a good temperature all night, and I’m glad I didn’t do a train… just not my thing.  Here are a few photos and comments in order of the gallery.

1. Tadaaaaa- my completed wedding dress laying out on the hotel room bed, waiting for me to put it on.

2. A close up of the layers- it looks so fluffy!

3. A full shot- Although it fit great I still felt the need to hitch it up every once in a while, just to check.

4. The pretty side.

5. The not-as-pretty side- there’s a zipper hiding in there somewhere. 

MIA, but for a good reason!

So John and I have been married for over two months now.  Since the big day, we went to Mexico, went to Dallas to be in one of my favorite people’s weddings, re-organized the kitchen, cleaned up random wedding mess, worked, and got back into the swing of cooking at home and going to the gym.  Then I went to Asia, finished season deadlines at work, and finished a new wedding dress for my friend Liz (details later!).  Forgive me if I still have to recap all the wedding fun that I haven’t talked about in detail yet! 

I’ve decided since it’s taken me many many tries to finish this post, I’m going to break it down further.  Let’s see if we can go in chronological order here.  1st- the rehearsal dinner dress.  I didn’t wear it because I decided it turned out too horribly.  I want to turn it into something else… I’ll post on that later if it happens.  :)  Next up is my wedding dress, then the bridesmaids’ dresses.

mini wedding projects

I’ve been preoccupied with last minute wedding plans and little projects.  Nothing has taken lots of time individually, but combine them all and it’s plenty of work.

I uploaded our kid photos and had mini moo cards printed.  The backside has our wedding date and a URL where guests can upload their own digital photos to share with us/each other.  I plan on having these by by the guest book so they can take one home.

 

kid photo moo cards

Our awesome wedding planner Melissa is also acting as florist, and she needed a little ribbon to wrap the bouquets.  Never satisfied with store-bought when I can create my own, I cut one inch strips of the flower girl silk, burned the edges, dusted them off and rolled them up for her.  It’ll be a detail that most people won’t notice, but it matches my dress and the hems of the bridesmaids’ and flower girls, so I am happy.

 

burned edge silk ribbon

That’s it for now!  I have a feeling I’ll have lots more photography posts in the future, and I’m making my friend’s wedding dress as soon as I get back from my vacation so that might make an appearance if she doesn’t mind.

See you again as a married lady.

flower girl dresses

Yippee!  I am done with almost all of the things I said I wanted to sew for my wedding.  I think there’s a waist sash/ribbon for one dress left, and I still have a tiny bit of hand sewing on my dress, but all of the big projects are done.  I present to you…

The flower girl dresses!

 

flower girl dresses

They’re miniature, lighter colored versions of the bridesmaid’s dresses.  The flower girls are my two nieces aged 4 and almost 9.  

 

flower girl dress close up

An aside- while the fig tree is shade for my bedroom and nice smells for my nose, it is also raccoon/possum food and barefoot grossness, along with dog snacks if I don’t say “nonono” fast enough.  One last photo for you.

 

death of a flip flop

You can even read the brand I was wearing if you look close enough. At least I was wearing shoes!

Neckties

Making ties for the wedding party and dads turned out easier than I thought.  Preparation takes the most time; planning how to cut, especially with my hand dyed silk, is the first step.  Cutting the tie and then the guts is more time consuming than the machine sewing portion.  All in all I spent the better part of two days making these, all while watching/listening to “Rear Window”, “Vertigo”, “Be Kind Rewind” and a couple episodes of “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”.  I feel like I never need to watch TV again.

Aqua ties in the fading July 4th light:

Back view of the ties hanging from our fig tree:

One satisfied customer:

Just imagine that tie but with a nice dress shirt, black jacket, shaven face and trimmed hair.  Same groom, though.  This one hangs a little funny… I will fix that.

I’m more satisfied with these than I am with the rehearsal dinner dress, but less satisfied than I am with my wedding dress.  I can live with that!

finally!

I am on the brink of completing my wedding dress.  A little work on the hem and then tacking down the ruffles a little so they don’t flap up in the wind and I’m good to go.  I am going to wait until after the wedding to post about the dress, but I should be talking about neckties next week and flower girl dresses the week after that!  That’s my schedule, anyways… we’ll see if I can keep it. I can’t afford to slack off because the wedding is less than 5 weeks away.  It’ll be nice once these projects are over so I can relax a little!

Sneak preview because I can’t resist…

eh- the rehearsal dinner dress

The dress you saw in the last post didn’t turn out so great.  I have a bad habit of rushing when working on projects for myself and cutting corners.  First problem- I accidentally dyed the silk lavender instead of orangy-peachy-pink.  After deciding to go along with it, I had a really difficult time sewing in the lining and the zipper didn’t turn out so great either.  I could have avoided all these things, but I rushed and didn’t plan well.  As a result…

Here’s the dress on the form.  The bubble hem didn’t work well because I cut the lining too short, so this is unhemmed.  It’s also not very boatnecky.

Front view after I hemmed it.  I burned the edges then attached the body to the lining at 4 points, making it a quarter bubbley or so.  I’m inventing plenty of words right now.

Side view… Here you can see many of the reasons why I’m unhappy- I stretched the back neck out and the zipper doesn’t lay nicely.

Finally, the only decent way to wear it- half covered!  I don’t like the high neck with the sweater over it but I won’t wear it by itself.  Maybe I’ll throw a t-shirt over it and call it a day.

I promise myself to not rush on any other projects.  At least I think it looks prettier in motion than it does when I stand still.  The next big finale will be the wedding dress.  The end!

 

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.