I got engaged last June and even before that knew I wanted to make my dress with the help of my Mother-in-Law to be, Nancy. I knew it wouldn't be easy but I was confident we could handle it and that the end result would be worth any strife.
What I did not anticipate was the role I was asking Nancy to play. When we started I sort of thought that we would connect once per week and work on each step together, with me taking on the bulk of the work and her there to guide me and bail me out of any jams I found myself in. That's not really how it has turned out. Instead Nancy has taken the lead and tackled the bulk of the whole project. She had time in the evenings with the project staring her in the face and really went to town getting the dress to the point where we are ready to bead.
Because of this, I was somewhat sheltered from the jams and problems that arose along the way. She kept me in the loop and we discussed everything but I've been so impressed with the way that she has been able to navigate the finer points of how making a wedding dress is a pain in the ass. There! I finally said it. I've been all sunshine and roses and keeping a positive spin on this but the truth is that this has not been easy and I have been lucky as hell to have Nancy in my corner because she is a sewing BOSS.
Things progressed really well until we got to the overlay. As you may have noticed, that was what my last couple of posts mentioned and then CRICKETS! This is partly because my life has been extra crazy the past couple of months but it is also the result of the overlay giving us some serious attitude. This is entirely my fault as the dress I "designed" had an overlay that was different than the pattern we are using. In order for the overlay to lack the bottom seam as I desired there was some magic that had to happen and some modifications needed to be made. Up until this point, if you could master your pattern, I am confident anyone with enough drive, patience, and tenacity could make their own wedding dress. After this overlay excursion I am confident it can still be done but I do see why many (most all) modern brides choose to buy their dresses. It is really hard work though and even though I haven't been knee deep in the think of the issues, I can recognize that this has been a complicated and stress inducing project.
Do not misunderstand me though. I am ECSTATIC about the way my dress is shaping up. This dress is going to be gorgeous and it fits me like a glove. When I put it on I literally feel like I transform into a beautiful bride. I feel amazing in it. It feels secure and like it holds in all the parts that I am self conscious about and it just radiates beauty back at me. This is easy for me to say having been pampered by Nancy but I am absolutely sure this was the right and best option for me. I want this blog to be an accurate account of how the dress developed through the process so I don't feel right not discussing the problems we (mostly Nancy) have faced.
So let's talk about the problems. When you don't have a pattern for what you need you have to make a pattern. To make the new pattern for my overlay we taped the two top pieces to their corresponding bottom pieces and cut out the fabric from that so there wasn't a seam. This sounds relatively simple right? Wrong. Patterns are already so flimsy that taping it together makes it much bigger and somewhat more difficult to work with. This is compounded by the fact that patterns are flat and girls... well this girl... is anything but flat. This is an issue that you can work through pretty easily but it isn't the most fun part of the project.
After that we had to cut the material out of our new pattern. Also sounds pretty simple right? Wrong again. I wanted to incorporate pieces from my Mother's dress into mine and Nancy and I both thought that using her overlay to make my overlay would work perfectly. When we tried this though we realized that the shape of my Mother's overlay is totally different than mine and that a one for one exchange was just not an option. It took more magic and farting glitter to make it work and in the end Nancy NAILED it! She was able to use my mother's overlay with piecing pieces together in a way that is completely invisible and made it happen. She worked so hard to make this part happen for me and it really came out fantastic.
After creating the overlay and fitting it to the dress we had to iron it and secure the overlay to the dress. We used some stitching for this but we also used stitch witchery. This stuff is freakin' awesome! It allows you to just iron the pieces together and the bonding glue secures it invisibly and has some substantial strength. It made putting the overlay and the under dress together much easier.
The next obstacle was creating pleats in the places on the overlay that were present on the dress we used as the model for our design. These pleats were a main part of why I chose this dress design and they were a key element in the overall look I was going for. The pattern we used called for pleats in the underdress but they were in a different place than where I intended the overlay pleats to be. This meant that we had to figure out how to cut the fabric and shape it so that we could create the new pleats for the overlay using no pattern at all. We met and discussed different ways we could do it and decided to cut the fabric at an angle so when we brought the fabric together it created the pleats absolutely perfectly.
I really tried to be realistic about this process and I really wanted to take on all the stress and work myself so that I wasn't putting it on someone else to do it for me. Sometimes things don't go as you expect though and I am so lucky and appreciative for everything Nancy has done. She has silently shouldered so much of the stress of this project so that I have a great experience with a beautiful result. I feel so lucky that I get to marry her son and just as lucky to be getting a bonus Mom that cares enough to do so much for me to make this beautiful and special.
So as this has unfolded I've sat upon my white blogging horse and talked about how I wanted to make this a project that anyone could do with the right attitude but it hasn't been that simple and I have to be honest about that. I don't know how I would have handled the issues that Nancy has solved for me but I suspect that I would have had to start over at least once because I would have botched at least one thing that would have been so catastrophic I would have had to start over from scratch to fix it.
At this point we have the dress completed to "canvas" status. Now the beading starts and the real fun (?!) begins.
<3 The Future Mrs. Luce
86 days to go
