The Wedding Dress - Preparing the Pattern for the Bodice

Since my work has instituted a new "use it or loose it" vacation policy, I am taking this whole week off for vacation. My eighty-nine year old father has come to stay with me for a few days and this morning we sat at my dining room table and while he read to me stories that he had written about his childhood, I began my DD's wedding gown.

This is View A of Butterick 5419 that I am using as the base for the bodice draping. It is a very plain strapless bodice with a sweetheart neckline. The fitted princess seamed top comes down to the hip-line and therefore needs to fit closely at bust, waist and hip. Conestoga wagons carried my ancestors from North Carolina to Indiana after the civil war.


While my dad read the stories about his family that he wrote down over 2 decades ago, I separated the sheets of tissue paper to find pattern pieces numbered 1 through 4. My grandfather had been born by this time and was growing up with his grandparents as his mother died in childbirth. I cut the pattern pieces out and ironed them with a cool iron to get out all of the wrinkles. Next, I measured all of the pattern pieces to find out their dimensions. I compared DD's measurements to each piece and determined which ones would have to be adjusted and how.

By this time, my grandfather got his inheritance of land when his grandfather died and he sold it to his uncle and was able to take two years of college. I cut the pattern pieces à la my practice pattern for adjustments to the hips and bust. I know the waist will be too big, but I will take that in during the fitting.

World War I saw my grandfather in the army for only 10 months. He missed action over seas -- as an educated man, he was made a corporal and acted as secretary to an army general. I marked the pieces with the seam allowances so that I can mark the muslin next. You can see where I increased the width of the side back to adjust the hip to a larger size.

My grandfather was already a widower whose first wife died during the pandemic of the Spanish Flu. My grandmother was worked as a nurse and as a phone operator around the time that my grandfather met her. They were married by the Justice of the Peace. I'll get started marking the muslin tonight after dinner. I am hoping my father will continue to read to me as I work. It reminds me of when I was a little girl and we used to . . .

Happy story telling!