I got married yesterday and so far I've liked my married life. This past month was very hectic but I managed to get my dress done in the end.
I had so many troubles during the process, but the dress turned out fabulous. It took weeks to finish, but it was totally worth every tear, all the sweating and blood stains on the white fabric. My wedding was just so perfect!
Almost everything I wore on my day was DIY: my dress, petticoat, bolero, veil, rose for hair. Well the shoes I bought.
So because this is a knitting/crocheting/sewing blog, I need to give out basic insturctions or ideas for people that want to make their own wedding dress/evening dress
I'll post the picture of the finished dress after I get back from my short trip and I have time to go through all the pics taken from wedding.
This posting is about the dress, I'll make next post about other wedding accesories
1) Take your time deciding the pattern and consider different options
2) Choose fabric wisely. I made my dress from Duchess Satin and it was a good fabric. Easy enough to sew and believe it or not, but I dropped coffee on my hem during the event and I just needed to wipe it away, the gabric didn't stain. (But I happen to have grass marks on the hem from picture session)
3) Do enough practice runs and pattern modifications. I made two practice version of the bodice and it was a good thing to do. It is so much easerie to adjust the length of the back and the fitting of the breasts with practice fabric. Do fitting with enough mirrors and with a help of a frien or a bridesmaid.
4) If you have a large hem and a fitted bodice consider making the dress in two pieces. My bodice was fitted and I didn't need addtional support from bones/rigillene, but because the hem was full length half a circle I weighted so much, I thought that it would pull the bodice too low. My stress was strapless and quite low cut and I didn't want to spend time adjusting the dress and being scarde that it would reveal too much.
4b) If you make it a two piece dress BUY a LONG enough zipper!!! I had to redo the zipper at least three or four times and it left small holes on the fabric (if you have the patience you do buttons...) I bought a separate foot for invisible zippers for sewing machine, it cost a lot, but the zipper turned out good. Remember to too the practice runs so that you have the amount of sewing allowances for zipper measured correctly. I had trouble trying to take of the dress so I needed to redo the zipper again and adjust it better.
4c) I bough a 45cm zipper and sewed the whole zipper to the dress bodice. Then closed the zipper and just to the lower part I made a few stistch for a zipper stopper and the I cut the left over zipper with scissor.
5) You can save ugly parts with pearls. The internet is full of amazing tutorials on different kind of pearl flowers and so on.
7) Some people turn the bottom part of hem and sticht it by hand, I had a special foot for hem turning that came with the sewing machine when I bought it. I've never used it and didn't know how to, but there was a good german tutorial on YouTube and hey, it is a good thing to learn something new.
These are just few of the thing I learnt making my own dress.
