05 July 2015

The Wedding Dress

Goodness, it has been a bit over six months since I last posted. A lot has changed - we moved from our downtown-y apartment to a rental house in further out SE Portland (where I have a private sewing studio!), after 11 months of underemployment I started a job in June with a local non-profit health insurance company where I do fun data analysis projects, and I made my sister's wedding dress!

This post is about the wedding dress.

I started with Lekala Little Atlas Dress #5199 in her measurements. It is a bit unweildly to make a wedding dress when she lives in Texas, I am in Oregon, and the wedding was in Las Vegas, but we made it work through photos and chatting on the phone.

I used the bodice of the Lekala dress and drafted a 1/4 circle skirt according to her measurements. My sister crocheted an overskirt (and shawl, but it was too hot to wear it) which was so pretty.



I made the final dress out of Silk Dupioni lined with rayon bemberg. It was my first time using either fabric and while I liked the feeling of the bemberg, it was a bit of a bitch to sew due to the the shifting while cutting and sewing! On the other hand, the silk was fantastic to sew with because it had a bit of texture and did not shift around.


Here are the practice dresses:

Muslin #1 - Bed sheets from my mom's fabric stash. (Thanks, Mom!) My sister wanted the strap on the left, just narrower.


Muslin #2 - Fabric from JoAnn's. I used the straps from the Cambie Dress, but they were toooooo wide, so I took them in by 2-ish inches for the final product.

I have made this dress a total of 5 times - 2 linings and three fashion fabrics and I am now able to bust it out in about 3 to 4 hours. Doreen, if you ever need to renew your vows in the same dress, I can totally do that for you. : )

Here are a few more final photos (with Elvis. It was Vegas after all! If you are going to get married in Vegas, it probably should be done by Elvis). The straps should have been sewed a bit shorter, but at the final fitting, it looked like they were fine. My mom did the hand sewing to attach the straps to the dress (Thanks again, Mom!). I dislike hand sewing a lot.


Her bouquet is made out of "zipper roses". A friend from her work made all of them and she assembled them onto the foam ball. It looked super cool.






The immediate family.


Everyone who came to the wedding!


Here are a couple of photos from the after party:


Sister Selfie time!


Doreen is drinking all our wine!!


My siblings (minus my brother :( who wasn't able to make it). We all look the same and different at the same time.


I didn't make time to construct a new dress with working my new job, so I went to Nordstrom Rack to pick up a new dress. It was so novel that having a completed dress didn't take many complicated steps (scheming, cutting, constructing), long hours, and swearing - I just tried on a few dresses and picked the one that fit me the best. My sister, Beth (on the far left), though, made her dress, and did a super great job!

FYI: It is a terrible idea to go to Las Vegas anytime that it might be hot. The weather ranged from 27C to 42C+! But, as everyone kept reminding me, at least it was a dry heat. However, it was so hot, that I don't think humidity played a part in my uncomfortableness! Also, I recommend going to the Hoover Dam and taking at least the Power Plant Tour. It was really neat to learn about the history of the dam. Although, I think the idea of the dam providing endless water to the surrounding states is flawed, it really is an engineering marvel.

TL;DR: The wedding dress came out well, the wedding was so much fun, and Las Vegas was hot. A++ would do again.

As a side note, my husband has the same waist size as my sister, so I had the dress on him to trim up the unevenness from the quarter circle skirt. I wish I had taken a picture of him in the dress, but alas, the memory just stays in our heads.

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