Wedding Dress Again

I am very happy to say that on Sunday July 24th I got married! I feel like I have worked on nothing but wedding projects for months now, even though I know that isn't really true because at the very least I finished two sweaters this year. Regardless, I am now feeling a bit of a project void. While I try and figure out what to do next I thought I would share my wedding dress with y'all.

I could not be happier with how my dress turned out. The skirt is one that I made ages ago but never actually wore, it's a full circle so it had great twirl. The top I drafted myself based on the same pattern pieces that I used for the corset I have on underneath, but with the addition of a sweetheart neckline. Because the skirt and top were drafted at different times I actually forgot about trying to make the side seams line up, which is part of why I added the blue sash (the other part being because it looked cute). I doubt that anyone would notice the seams without me pointing it out. 

I felt big and poofy and slightly silly but also really beautiful in my dress, my mom and my husband both came near to tears when they saw me. (This is the first time putting husband in writing, oh what a tingly rush that is). The kids at the wedding all told me I looked like a princess. 

I also made my veil. I've never tried any millinery work before, but seeing as my dress what short and blue I wanted something that made me feel slightly more bridal. I used scraps of fabric from my dress and 1/4 yd millinery netting, plus a piece of lace that I tatted and a small round piece of buckram that I bought pre-shaped. I don't know if what I did was the "right" way to make a headpiece but it worked and I loved the results. 

I started by handsewing a random scrap of my wedding dress fabric (a silk dupioni from silkbaron.com if I haven't said that yet)

Then I trimmed the edges down to match the buckram.

Next I made a short piece of bias tape and I sewed it around the edge to finish it. 

Finally I tacked the netting down then tacked the tatting over top of it by sewing down the picots. Here is a photo where you can see the lace clearly. 

And here is a photo taken by a friend of mine at the wedding. 

Wedding Dress

Guys, guys, guys! 

I finished my wedding dress!

I am not going to post a picture until after the wedding, but trust me, it's really really pretty. I am way super happy with the way it turned out and it fits perfectly. Less than one month, then I will post pictures. 

Sweater Weather?

A couple of weeks ago it was 90 degrees out and I was totally desperate to do something, anything, that had nothing to do with my wedding, so I finished knitting a wool sweater.

It was way way way too warm to wear a sweater, so I put it on for, like, 30 seconds, snapped a picture and called it good. 

I haven't posted about it until now because I kept thinking I would take the time to take a better picture, but I haven't gotten around to that yet, so no good picture for you :)

Anyway, I am very pleased with the final fit of the sweater. It has a hi-low hem which I'm not sure I really like, but it is super duper comfy. I think of it as the sweatshirt sweater because it's that level of comfort, but just by being a sweater it looks 10x more professional. It's hard to tell in the picture because the lighting is terrible but it's a nice gray-blue color. The yarn is Brooklyn Tweed Loft (the fancy 100% USA made yarn I talked about a while back) and the pattern is Brooklyn Tweed Gable. It was a total snap to make, wonderfully mindless. All in all a great mental break from wedding projects.

Now that I've gotten it done I am throwing myself into wedding stuff with a renewed vigor and determination. I've got 1 month to get everything done

Bunting

Does anyone else ever think so hard about doing something that they forget to actually sit down and do it? I constantly forget to respond to texts because I already thought about my answer, but I don't get as far as actually writing it. Sometimes I do that with this blog too. I think in such great detail abut writing a post that I forget to actually write it down.

Which is a long-winded way of saying that I meant to write this last Saturday, but I forgot. Oops.

Anyway, the wedding project of weeks past has been bunting to hang from the ceiling. I'm particularly excited about this project because all of the flag fabric has come from either my grandmothers, my mom's, my future mother in law or my own fabric stash. So it hasn't cost me any money, and it also feels like a great, subtle, way to incorporate the other crafty women in my life into my wedding.

Originally I was going to sew together two triangles to get fully finished flags, but after due consideration, I decided that was far too much extra work, and what I wanted to do instead was use the flags to make a quilt after the wedding. I really don't want wedding items that are single use only and a quilt seems like a great way to reuse the flags and to have as a nice keepsake.

I was inspired by images like the quilt below. I want to link to the original source for this picture, but unfortunately, I can't track it back and I can't find the image on the original page anymore. Y'all know how Pinterest can be sometimes. It seems to come from a shop called Shabby Fabrics.

Anyway, making bunting is delightfully easy, especially with a bias tape maker and a rotary cutter and mat. Here is my giant stack of flags. I made a cardboard template for the triangles by drawing a horizontal line 7" long, then drawing a perpendicular line from the middle of that line, also 7" long. I draw a line from each end of my horizontal line to the end of the perpendicular line nad ta-da I had a triangle. The cardboard was nice and thick so it was super easy to run my rotary cutter along it and end up with hundreds of identical flags.

Next, I made 1/2" double fold bias tape. Sure you can buy bias tape, but it works about to about a buck a yard and I need around about 50 yds worth. Not very cost effective. Alternatively, Craftsy has a pretty good tutorial on making continuous bias tape. So for $5 ish I bought cheap white cotton and made my own bias tape. 

Having a bias tape maker really helps with that process because you don't have to fold everything by hand. You just feed the fabric through the fat end, and it gets folded on its own. you iron the folds while slowly pulling the bias tape maker down the length of your bias strips, like pulling a zipper. Bias tape makers make single fold tape, so you have to go back and fold it in half yourself, but it's still pretty easy-peasy. I've got a 1" single fold bias tape maker, so I can make 1/2" double fold bias tape. Bias tape makers are pretty darn cheap, but each one only does one size. You can buy them individually or in kits. 

Man, I could talk about bias tape for days. Maybe one day I'll write a post on bias tape and why it is 1) the most wonderful stuff in the world and 2) not just for quilters. 

Once I got my bias tape made I sewed it shut, tucking a flag in between the layers every couple of inches. Bias tape is nice and flexible so it will hang in pleasing drapes from the ceiling. In the meantime, I laid it out on my bed to try and get an idea of how it was turning out. (I don't think it goes well with my current bedspread/pillows. Haha)  I've finished sewing two eighty some odd feet long strands of it so far. I don't know the exact dimensions of our venue, so I'm just going to keep sewing until I run out of flags. I will probably end up with way too much bunting, but I would rather have too much than too little, and even with extra this is a super cheap project. Yay stash fabric!

Quick Tatting Projects

Typically for every long-term project I have going on I try to have a quick and easy project too. I find the balance helps keep me interested in the long-term by having the immediate gratification of something that can be done in an afternoon. Lately, though I've just been working on long-term projects, either one of the two sweaters I have on the needles or wedding projects. I've been starting to feel frustrated and burnt out because I was working and working without getting anything finished, so this weekend I took a little break and made a few quick tatting projects.

First, I made a pair of earrings:

Did you know it is ridiculously hard to take a picture of your own ear?

This was the best I could manage to try and give you an idea of how large they are.

I got the pattern here. The instructions for how to tat are a little less than helpful I think. I would have been totally confused if it was actually my first foray into needle tatting, but I thought the pattern was cute. 

Making the earrings only took me about half an hour to do both, which just made me want to tat more so this afternoon I made a small piece of lace.

 I didn't use a pattern for this one, I basically just made it up as I went along, and I didn't write down what I did, so I probably couldn't do it the same way a second time. I like the way that it looks, though, and I think it will be really cute as part of a hair comb for the wedding. Ha. I was trying to get away from wedding projects, but I wasn't very successful. Oh well. At least I have the satisfaction of two finished tatting projects. I feel a bit better now.

Working on my Wedding Corset

I really hoped to have a finished corset to show off today, but alas, although I did finish one the fit is less than ideal. I would go so far as to say it is disappointingly too big. So instead you get a long, picture free, post mostly made up of me taking notes for myself.

Although I did make a muslin before making the corset, and I was happy with the fit of the muslin, the finished product gapped too much at the neckline and didn't give me the kind of waist reduction I was hoping for. Not that I want to be cinched so tight I can't breathe, but my natural figure is very straight from my waist to my hip and I want to alter that, just a little bit.

There are a few errors that I think I made with the first corset.

1) I did not lace up the muslin, I just had a friend hold the back shut for me and tell me what kind of gap I had. As a result, I didn't really realize how much tighter it actually needed to be in order to fit. Corsets should fit very tight to the body if only to eliminate shifting (and therefore potentially rubbing). There were rubby spots on my corset because the fit was too loose.

2) The fit of the bust area was perfect without bones, but when I added bones the fabric stood up to much. For some reason, I foolishly thought that would magically go away; in reality, the bust was too loose and nothing was going to magically fix that.

So, now I'm making a new corset, having learned a great deal from the first one and being able to move forward with greater confidence.

I redrafted my pattern today to include a much greater waist reduction. My original pattern I only aimed for a two-inch reduction because I thought more than that would be uncomfortable or look too exaggerated. This time, I aimed for an additional 4 inches (so 6 total). I also took in the bust and eliminated the sweetheart neckline in favor of a lower straight neckline.

I already made a new muslin. This time, I pounded in some cheap eyelets and laced it up. I used masking tape to hold the bones in place rather than sew on ribbon for bone channels. It's easier, cheaper, and still gives a good approximation of what the corset will be like with bones.

Already I can tell the fit is better. I now have a cute, little, defined waist, but it doesn't have that waspy look vintage corset patterns impart, I just look skinnier than I am in reality. Making the top shorter also helped with the fit in the bust, there was just less material for the bones to hold stiffly away from my body. Now I do have to keep reminding myself that the corset will be underneath my gown, and there will be more coverage because the girls are way on display, which I don't typically feel comfortable with. Now I'm noticing that they are squishing a bit more to the side than I want them too, so that is the next fit challenge to overcome.

I will have a tutorial for the handbound eyelets that I did on the first corset coming up this week. And hopefully soon I will have a finished corset that fits to show off.

Still Plugging Away

It's been nearly a month since I posted and in that time I have not finished a single project; a state that I find very frustrating.

I've been steadily chipping away at wedding projects. I made more paper flowers but y'all have seen those already so I didn't feel like posting them again.

I've almost finished my petticoat. It just needs some sort of ribbon of something on the lower edges because even though the nylon tulle won't unravel it looks really unfinished with nothing on the hem.

I have nearly finished a corset, I'm just hand sewing the eyelets now, I hope to have it done by the end of the week.

When the corset is finished I can then start drafting a pattern for my actual wedding dress. I didn't want to start working on it before the foundational garments are done because that seems like a recipe for disaster.

All in all, I know progress is being made, but it isn't happening very quickly and I'm starting to get anxious. I've been having nightmares where I wake up, it's my wedding day, and I haven't done anything more than what is currently done (picture a room with only half the tables sparsely decorated, no food, and me in my (admittedly elaborate full coverage) undies.

I know I will get it all done, I just need to spend more time working on it. Oh if only I didn't have to go to work all week :)