How embarrassing, my boss (NM – you should know who she is) caught me looking at wedding dresses at work today.  But luckily it gave me the opportunity to tell her that I plan to make my own wedding dress.  I was really afraid to tell her that I did not want her to make it for me since I didn’t want to insult her designer ego, but she was really cool with it and thought that it was awesome that I’d do something like that!!  She even said she was relieved because it would be less work for her, and told me I can help myself to the company’s poly georgette for draping the pattern.  What a relief!

btw, I started draping the bodice last night!!  So now i have most of the pattern for the top half complete.  Maybe later I’ll post some really vague pics.  Next to drape or pattern out – skirt, skirt lining, and built in bra….

With Joe completely overwhelmed with Finals for PT school, I’ve had lots of free time to work on my projects.  I definitely miss him these days, but I decided to make the most of it.  So since I had the majority of this past weekend all to myself, I went ahead and finished the up the bridesmaid dresses.

The last one i had left to do was my sister’s dress with the ruffles.  I forgot to document the removal of the notch/ruched detail, but I started out by removing the entire front section of the bodice and attaching a new, unruched rectangle of fabric.

Here you can see the new panel of fabric sewn into the bodice. That strip of fabric above it will later become the ruffle.

Here you can see that I left the top seam open so that I can sew the first ruffle in.

Here you see me pinning the second ruffle into place

I think this was actually the easiest dress to embellish.  It was the most straight forward and probably took the least time which is why I saved it for last…to prevent myself from running out of steam.  I do still have to take it in at the waste a little, but I’m pretty tired of working on these dresses, so I think I’m going to get that done at work.

And here is Nicole's completed dress.

Oh, but thats not all I did.  After staring at May’s dress for a few days, it was really bugging me that something about it felt off balance. The big abstract bow on top with the full pleated skirt really looked kind of frumpy and like too much was going on.  Plus the other dresses looked much more cohesive than this one.  So after a lot of thought and sketches, I decided to simplify her skirt by removing most of the pleats and taking it in so that it looks more like a pencil skirt, but probably not quite as tight as a pencil skirt – is there a name for that type of silhouette??  I think this was a perfect solution because it allows the bow to be the focal point rather than having they eye distracted by too much busyness.  In my opinion, it definitely looks more sophisticated now.

May's streamlined skirt. Please excuse the horrible quality of this picture.

I also have a new toy that made all these alterations much more professional.  My serge machine!!!  I love this thing, I finally took the time to learn how to use it after it sat in its box in my hallway for several months.  Threading it its super complicated, but once threaded, its really easy to use.

So a couple weeks ago I wrote about altering the neckline on Jenn’s dress.  Well now I’ve added the final details and its finally finished! You can see the progress below.  After altering the neckline, the next step was to make the waist band and bow.

The waist band on ironing board to be pressed

Here the waist band has been pressed and attached to the dress

This piece of fabric will eventually become the bow. Here you can see it with raw edges, before I attached the lining

Here are all the various elements that make up the bow. They are all lined, pressed, and ready to be assembled

After I created the bow, I had to hand sew it onto the dress.

Here you can see the bow pinned to the dress. The next step is to sew it on by hand

And here is the final product!!  I’m very pleased with the results.  The bow ended up looking like a combination of various inspirations that I found and is kind of my own take on the abstracted bow.  The original design was actually the result of a compromise.  When I made my first sketches, May and Jenn both wanted the same dress, the one with the large bow on the bust.  Jenn and I came up with this idea so that everyone would be happy, and I actually really love how it turned out.  Its different enough from the other bow dress, but will fit in well with the whole group.  I think it looks really sophisticated yet girly and cute at the same time.

Well, mostly done, but it really feels like an achievement.  All three of the dresses that I plan to alter are in some stage of transformation.  I felt like I should alternate doing a little bit of each dress since getting started is always the hardest part, and the first step for each dress (removing the ruched tab detail) seemed like the most challenging task.  So even though I started with Jenn’s dress, I’ve put hers on hold and started May’s and Nicole’s dresses…and some how I just gained momentum on May’s dress and ended up finishing it.  Luckily this time I remembered to take more pictures!!  You’ll have to forgive the quality of my pics though, the lighting in my room is terrible.

Like I said before, the first step was to remove the tabbed ruche detail, so I tore the whole neckline apart at the seams.

Here I am pinning together the new seams.  You kind of have to add seams to shape the bust and get rid of all that extra fabric from the ruching.  I decided to place my seams differently than I did for Jenn’s sweetheart dress because these seams will easily be hidden by the large bow detail.  I’d say the hardest part about this was that the dress form was too small for the dress.  I had to pin it together in the back and make sure everything was proportional.

Roughly pinning together the new seams. I'm totally self taught, so forgive me if my terminology is off or if my process is totally weird or incorrect in any way. But I think I still get good results. Those two pieces of fabric pinned on the side will later become the bow for the bust.

After that, I sewed together the new seams as you see below, but the neckline is still open so that I can sew in the bow later.

This piece of fabric will eventually become part of the big bow detail

I still need to tack the bow in place in a couple of spots so you’ll see some pins and thread still sticking out, but this is basically the completed embellishment!  I decided to make the bow a little more abstracted than my original sketch, and I’m really happy with the results.  Its actually kind of similar to this other Jcrew Dress, but I think I like mine more =)

This was my first time using a dress form for any sewing project.  In the past I always struggled through flat patterning when making my clothes.  I’m so thankful Jenn let me borrow her dress form because it has made it so much easier to figure out what alterations need to be made and how and where and whatever.

And just as a reminder, here’s a picture from the Jcrew website to show you the dress in its original form

Oh yeah, and coincidentally, its May’s birthday today!  Happy birthday May!