How to Make The Wedding Dress: Phase 2- Sew You Think You Can Sew

I anticipated that this project was going to be a HUGE undertaking and I braced myself for a long process of hurrying up to wait. The real deal is that it absolutely IS a huge undertaking but breaking it into pieces has kept me fulfilled and I'm getting a heavy dose of gratification every time we get a step closer to it looking like an actual wedding dress.

I'm shocked at how seemingly quick and easy this is coming together. That is my cue to give another ginormous Thank You to Nancy for all she has done to make all of this seem like it is no sweat. I don't know if it is her experience or just her attitude for productivity but so far the phrase "easy peasy" keeps coming to mind. I'm not delusional though, I know that hard parts are on the horizon but so far I am so pleased with the progress.

I actually sewed my first stitch! Nancy did a LOT of work before I arrived and saved the "safe" pieces for me to do... you know.. because she's smart... I sewed all the pieces of the lining of the skirt with only a couple snaffoos...I sewed one seam inside out and then sewed a whole section of the lining into the rest of the lining because it got into my "sew path" without me knowing and because I was on such a roll (my new nickname is "Butter") I just blew right through and realized it about 20 stitches too late... had to tear it apart and then do it over again. A good helping of paying attention would have gone a long way to minimize these little problems. At the end of the session you could really see how well the dress we are making resembles the one I tried on at the bridal boutique.

This blog post has been a few weeks in the making because I've wanted to make sense of the pattern and the whole process so I could explain it in a way that anyone could read through it and be able to then go make a dress of their own. I am so grateful to Nancy because without her getting this far on my own would have been a lot more taxing. As she is teaching me I want to take that knowledge and put it in this blog so that it is easily (or at least relatively easily) replicated.

Here is what I have been able to decipher about bringing a dress pattern to life:

1. The Pattern is your Master

Before this, I had never even looked at a pattern to make clothing of any kind... (I know you're thinking "then why the hell would you want to make your own wedding dress?!" Because I'm a nutbag but mostly because Nancy was willing to be my guide. ) I wasn't sure how hard or easy it would be to figure out the instructions and what things the writers of the pattern took the liberty of assuming I knew when I actually knew nothing at all except for English... I'm pretty good at reading English...

Initially I wanted to scan in my whole pattern to show each step as I described it but then I remembered that McCall's probably has a better lawyer than I do and that is just not a wedding expense that I can really justify. Instead I'll include pictures of the pieces of the pattern that were fundamental in my understanding of how the pattern works.

~ Highlight your pattern: The pattern I am using can be used to make two different dresses. If you're in the same boat I highly recommend going through and highlighting or marking all the pieces of the pattern that are relevant to the dress you are making.

~Figure out the lingo: This might be really obvious but make sure you READ THE PATTERN before doing anything else. If you're new to this, like me, you won't understand it all the first run through but that's what the glossary and pictures are for.

For me I didn't know anything about cutting layouts, stitch names, symbols used to show cut/fold lines etc, or seam allowances. Reading through the pattern and getting comfortable with the things I didn't know was important. Here are the greatest tools when doing that:

a. Glossary
b. Sewing Information Fabric Key
c.Seam Allowance Key
d. Cutting Layout Key
e. Google (Whenever a technique or word was used that I wasn't sure what they meant but they obviously were assuming I would know what they meant, I Googled it like the modern maven I am.)

~ Gathering extra Materials: When I stressed above that you should read the pattern I need to come clean that I got away with not actually reading through my pattern carefully before writing this very post. Nancy did some of the biggest steps to get it to a point where I could start sewing. I know I've said this so many times but I am so lucky to have her. She has done so much to make this process so easy on me and I haven't had to feel like I'm going it alone at all.

When she read through the pattern though she mentioned that we needed to get some interfacing. I had no idea what she meant and she offered to find it because she knew what she was looking for. She explained that interfacing is the material used to provide shaping, reinforcement, firming and support. Generally interfacing is used for cuffs, collars, and things that need to maintain a shape but for our project, this was going to be the material that gave the top of the dress the sweet-heart look.

This wasn't on our initial list of things to obtain before getting started so we it made the "Extra Materials" list. We also added "boning" to this list of extra things we would need to proceed. I will also admit I giggled like a 12 year old boy at the thought of putting some boning into my dress... I'd make the inappropriate joke here about the dress leading to boning but... I guess the joke just made itself anyway....

Boning is not just a term for the naughty though, I learned after giggling... It is a lot like interfacing in principle as it is used to maintain shape and give support. The pattern I am using is for a strapless dress and in that kind of dress boning is used to provide the support needed to keep the top up without straps. My dress will have straps but they are more for decoration then real support... Pardon me for saying so but my "girls" need some serious support to avoid a wedding day Janet Jackson type of incident. Unlike interfacing, it is not a fabric but strips of flexible plastic or other hard material that gets sewn into "pockets" of the dress material. Think of a corset or underwire for a bra... It's like that.

2. Cut and Match Fabric Pieces to the Pattern

In the Phase 1 post, I talked about taking a day to cut out the pieces of the pattern that would serve as "templates" for cutting the material into the right shapes to make the dress. This is the part when those come into play.

Once you have cut the material into the shape using the pattern templates, you can match up the pieces, according to the pattern, to prepare to sew the pieces together to make the dress. The pattern walks you through this pretty clearly. The pattern doesn't call for pinning them all together first and putting them on your form but I think this step would be extremely helpful in making sure that you have all the correct pieces in the right places. It is kind of like a dress puzzle. At the end of this process you know what piece goes where and you're ready to start sewing the pieces together!!!

3. Fire up that Sewing Machine!

This is the moment we have all been waiting for! This is the part where the dress really starts to become something wearable. In my case, the 3 basic steps below, finalized the creation of the "shell" of my dress. The "shell" includes the lining (the part that touches your skin on the inside of the dress) and the shell of the outside. My dress also has a thin overlay that will be created after shell is complete that will match up exactly finalizing the dress to the point where you can begin to embellish and decorate it. Depending on the style of dress you're making this could vary but in almost all cases you'll have the lining and the outer section of the dress completed at the end of this step.

     a. Sew the Pieces Together According to your Pattern- Sew all the pieces for the top together, including the zipper, boning, interfacing, and any other things your pattern calls for so you have a complete top section. Do the same for the bottom so that you have a completed but separate top and bottom section of the dress.

   b. Make Adjustments- Once you have a top and bottom you can pin the two together and try them on to make sure that it is tailored to your body type. Since dress patterns are just a guideline, this step provides an opportunity to make tweaks so that the dress fits you specifically. Everyone is built differently so this is the part where the dress becomes custom to you and your build and will result in a well fitted gown that compliments your exact shape. This is also the time to hem the bottom of the dress based on where you want it to fall.

In my case we had to go back and adjust the length of how far the boning went down. The pattern called for the boning only to go down past the breast but when I tried it on, there was some significant puckering right where the boning ended. It looked weird. Extending the boning will smooth out the torso area.

     c. Sew the Top to the Bottom of the Dress- After you have made necessary adjustments you're ready to put the top and bottom together to finalize the shell of the dress. The pattern should walk you through this just as it did when you were sewing the sections together for the top and bottom.

Phase 2 Complete! Those are the basics of actually getting a dress from pattern to something that you can put on your body. The next phase for me is to attach the sheer overlay and adorn it with beautiful decorations that promise to have some fun mushy stories to share.