The Wedding Dress -- White on White

Sorry, I can't make white on white pictures look very interesting, but I did get a lot of work done today. The entire bridal skirt has been cut out. In the picture, you can just make out the dupioni behind the cotton batiste interlining. The work I did last week in marking all of the oversized slubs and loops last week proved to make laying out, pinning and cutting the fabric so much easier.

Actually, if truth be known, I have been a little nervous about the thought of cutting into the dupioni. The fabric isn't cheap and I don't want to make any mistakes. But once I started pinning out the interlining on the dupioni, making sure every grainline was parallel to the salvages, I forgot all about my fear. I think that I was cutting out the 3rd or 4th panel before I remembered that I was supposed to be scared.

This up and coming week, I am on vacation. My plan is to get a lot of the dress done this week; but for those of you who have read my blog for any length of time will remember my kitchen makeover. I am never one to over-estimate the amount of work I have planned on doing!

Happy Sewing!

The Wedding Dress -- It's the Little Things

Yea! My thread arrived!

This thread is one that was highly recommended by Susan Khalje in her Craftsy Class: The Couture Dress which I took last summer (and still refer to often). The thread is beautiful but you can't go down to your local fabric store and pick up a spool. No, it isn't made any more.

This is thread made of 100% silk by a company called Belding Corticelli. According to this article the silk industry started having issues when skirts became shorter, other fabrics like rayon became more prevalent, and ready made dresses became an acceptable and affordable option. I cannot find too much information about the company after the 1930's, so I am guessing that this thread could be almost 80 years old. . .

Additional information about one of the companies which preceded Belding Coricelli is found here in a historical article on one of the founders of Belding Brothers & Company.

Well, folks, I have a dress to make!

Happy Sewing!

The Wedding Dress -- Silk Road Inch by Inch

Since my last post, I finished up cutting out the interlining throughout the week and yesterday marked the seam lines and grain lines on the interlining with the white wax paper that I bought. It's going to be murder on the eyes to put it all together, but I'm willing to risk that for my baby girl! (Hear that DD? So, now, on to the dupioni!

Dupioni is a highly textured, two-sided fabric made from silk. A somewhat stiff fabric, it resists wrinkling and has a beautiful sheen created when the warp (lengthwise threads) and weave are slightly different in color and sheen. One of the beauties of this fabric is that each piece of fabric is unique. The fabric has "slubs" which are thicker bits of thread in the fabric. If you found this in any other fabric, you would consider it a flaw, but not in dupioni silk.

However, when you are making a wedding dress, there are a few kinds of slubs that we don't want in the fabric. Extra thread that loops around might snag on something or pull out or places where the thread has broken--leaving a hole. So, in order to assure that I don't put one of these right in the center of a prominent pattern, I spent two hours slowly inspecting the 15 yards of fabric. Any flaw that was too big, created excess thread or a hole was marked with a pin so that I would avoid that area when laying out the pieces of the pattern. Again, another long, eye-straining project -- but one that is necessary for a good outcome.

Sometimes, a woven fabric will have salvages that are woven tighter than the fabric itself. You can see here that the salvage curls up. So that the fabric and the salvages lies flat and is easy to measure, I clipped through salvage. Then the salvage can give.

Well, that is about all for this week's blog.

Happy sewing!

The Wedding Dress -- Now the Fun Begins!

The Skype fitting went as well as a Skype fitting could go, so with DD happy with the skirt, she shipped it back to me and then the fun began. Deconstruction was the first step. It was almost painful to carefully rip out all the seams in the muslin. All the work that went in to putting the skirt together!

After washing the cotton batiste, I spent a good portion of Saturday afternoon ironing the 10 yards I purchased. Then this morning, with my coffee safely stowed as far away as possible, I began pinning the panels of the muslin -- now the pattern -- to the batiste. I have about half of the skirt cut out and will continue to work on this through out the week.

My latest issue is whether to use the white or the red wax tracing paper. I can barely see the slightly off white wax on the white batiste.

However, you can see the red wax through the silk dupioni. It is not as apparent here as the dupioni has quite a bit of shine, but when you move the dupioni, you can see the line.





The company that I bought the sheets from had light blue and yellow, but apparently has closed and I will have to find another vendor.

I realize that this isn't much of an update, but pictures of white on white are hard to make interesting. I have a lot of work a head of me and will try to get a little more regular with blogging again.

Happy sewing!

The Wedding Dress 3.0

My last post was on December 1st and except for a lot of snow and a lot of very cold weather, not much of anything has happened. Nothing creative has happened for sure! I have not knitted, quilted or spun the only thing I have done is reworked the wedding dress a couple of times over. It is hard to work on miles and miles of plain white cotton. Last week I finished version three of the muslin and mailed it to DD via FedEx. Tonight she is going to try it on and we will do a fitting via Skype with one of her roommates helping. I am looking forward to starting the real dress if the fitting goes well.

I have to admit that I found a mistake in my calculations when I made the original bridal skirt. The pattern that I used for the skirt -- McCall's 6701 -- describes the dress as "close-fitting". The dress on the model in the picture is worn like a second skin. However, when I sat down and added up the width of all the pieces that made up the actual measurements of the dress at the waist -- it includes 2 1/2 inches of ease. So that is why my measurements were so far off! Note to self: Measure the pattern pieces themselves and measure them twice. . .

Now I just need to shake these winter "blues" that have set in with the winter white! Maybe I can get something done that has some color in it while I am waiting for the next stage in the dress.

Happy sewing, knitting, spinning or something! . . anything!

The Wedding Dress -- The Fitting and Necessary Adjustments

The DD came up for Thanksgiving week and the second she arrived home from the airport, she wanted to try on the dress. Ouch -- the muslin was too big. It was probably a combination of her loosing a couple of inches and my cutting/sewing, but it was large all over. Because I had previously made so many adjustments.to the base bodice, I ended up making an entirely new one. I began by pinching up a small portion of the deference at each seam in order to spread out the adjustments evenly over all of the seams. Next I marked the changes onto new fabric and then re-cut all new pieces.

DD also wanted a few changes. The ruching in the drapes was too soft and not tight enough for her. So not only did I have to narrow the front and back drapes, I had to lengthen them to allow for more gathering from top to bottom.

It took me a while to figure out how to accomplish lengthening the pieces; but I ended up cutting the drape into 3 even slices and then pinning them on new fabric measuring from the salvages over to the grain line in each slice of the pattern piece. I smoothed out the seam lines with my fashion ruler and marked the new pieces.

On the left is the resulting elongated back drape and at the top of the page you can see the new and tighter looking ruching.

So, along with hosting Thanksgiving and having two of the "kids" home for the week, I have had to begin re-cutting the the muslin. We did have a fun morning a Vogue Fabric in Evanston, Illinois -- What a treat that was! Stay tuned for that story.

I have to admit, I have not been sleeping well the last few days. I lie awake trying to figure out what I need to do next; thinking about what else could go wrong; and wondering if I bit off more than I can chew.

Time will tell. Happy insomnia!

The Wedding Dress -- The Flirt Skirt -- Changing the Pattern from Five Panels to Six

Back Panel of Simplicity 1760

Drew strait line past kick pleat

A few days ago, I posted that I had selected a pattern for DD's flirt skirt for the post wedding party. I explained that one of the things that I planned on doing was changing the back of the skirt from two panels to 3 panels making a total of 6 panels. This means that I will have 6 seams fairly evenly spread out around the hem of the skirt so that the box pleats (yes DD selected the box pleats) are also evenly disbursed.

Simplicity 1760 has a kick pleat and zipper along the center line. The zipper will be moved to the left side to match the zipper position of the bodice. By removing the kick pleat, I then had a straight line for the fold.

Marking the dart for cutting

There is also a dart in the center of each panel. I decided that the easiest way to divide the back, was to split it right though the dart. On the pattern piece, I drew a line parallel with the grain line from the point of the dart to the hemline. I then took my fashion ruler and drew in a curve from that point through the two top points of the dart. These lines are now my seam line.

I then pinned the piece to muslin and marked the back side panels with my tracing wheel and wax paper. When that piece was completely marked, I removed the pattern and marked another piece of muslin folded on the grain. This gives me three panels -- two sides and a center which was cut on the fold.

In the picture below you can see where the seam lines are marked. The 'X's are the center point of the former dart. I'll put the muslin together without the box pleat for the fitting. I don't want to do all the work for six box pleats just to find out that the skirt is 6 inches too long.

The marked former dart

I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as the muslin is concerned. My DD arrives for the Thanksgiving holiday and her fitting. We are also setting aside a day for a special trip to Vogue Fabrics to purchase the silk for her dress.

I have one last experiment left to see how big my circle ruffles need to be in order to get the perfect ruffle. One of my sewing friends suggested making the ruffles wider as they go down the skirt. Guess I will add that thought to the experiments.

Happy sewing!