Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Rob's Wedding Dress

Rob is my bestie from a million years ago and ever since. We rode dinosaurs to school together. Our tastes are about as different as two women can have, and that's all part of the fun of it.
Actually our wedding dresses have a few things in common - I will have made both of them, both have high waists, split overskirts and are made of silk. That however is where the similarities end.
Rob is a beach bunny, and is getting married on her favourite beach. She wants something that will float and flutter to the max in the wind, but not fussy. I'm making it so it has to be silk - on my planet, wedding dresses are made of natural fibres as much as practical. I got 19 momme charmeuse, silk crepe chiffon and silk organza from the US, since such things are really hard to find here, let alone at a sensible price.
So, here are some pics:
A bad sketch of the dress, decided upon after toile fitting. Vertically ruched bodice with sash under it, under and over skirts.

Using the dummy as a 3-d aid to ruching the bodice. Ruching is cut on straight grain as in spite of getting 12 yards of 54 inch wide fabric, I am running close to the wind! The chiffon is very givey though, probably more than some fabrics on the bias so it works.

Silk organza, boned bodice underlining. I like to get just enough engineering into a summer wedding dress - it could be 35 degrees (Celsius) on the day so the less weight, the better. Silk organza has amazing structural integrity for its weight and makes excellent interlinings.

Using the quilting design wall to test out the over skirt fronts. Right first time! :)

The skirts tacked together along the tops, seen draped over the ironing board, very poshe. All in all, these bits and bobs of components don't really give much away do they! But that's the trouble with wedding dresses, they are kind of modular and all come together at the end in a rush.
Anyway darling Rob is over for this weekend to be fitted, hemmed and generally to finalise everything, giving me three weeks to complete the dress, which I will take over with me on the ferry two days before. We're taking the ferry so the sewing machine can come too, just in case.
More pics to come as it builds, and maybe a few structural technique shots, including the taping process, as this seems to interest at least one other blogger :)

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