Wedding dress!

This post may get a bit long, in fact 'm fairly sure it may end up being more than one post!  It took ages for me to finally decide what I wanted to wear when I got married.  Mainly because what was most important to me was that I felt like me.  I went and tried loads of dresses on with my marvelous cousin Emma, and whilst it was great fun flouncing around in acres of satin and net, none of the dresses were right. I know some people have that 'moment' when they try on the perfect dress and fireworks burst over head, the orchestra plays and everything goes tra la, but I wasn't really expecting that to happen to me as I haven't known what I want to wear as a wedding dress since I was four!   There were several ones that I really liked and if I could not sew then I might have gone with one.  Over the years I have learnt what kind of dresses suit me and what styles I like;  I am a big fan of 1930's evening wear a la Vionnet, Schiaparelli and the Fred and Ginger movies. I love the simple lines and elegance of this period of fashion and I'm lucky that being fairly skinny and flat chested, I can wear bias cut without worrying about bulges (too much!).  From trying dresses on I also knew I wanted a cowl neck, as its very flattering to the less than amply endowed!  Bias cutting is not my favorite thing when drafting patterns, the additional dimension of the stretch across the bias means you pretty much chuck out the usual rules for pattern drafting... So I decided to save myself a lot of time and swearing and check to see if any of the pattern companies had something similar that I could adapt.  I was so lucky that Vogue had this pattern, V2965.  It had all the main points, slightly 1930's feel, cowl neck and bias cut; the low back would also be approved of by my future husband ;-)

My fabric choice was kind of made for me, in that bias cut really only works in fabric that drapes beautifully and preferably is a natural not man-made fabric. Natural fibres have more stretch and every time I've made a bias cut dress, the silk ones just work better than the man made fabric. I did think about having a patterned fabric but in the end I opted for a rich, strong colour (being as pale as I am, white or ivory really don't suit me - unless dragged from the grave is a look you find attractive!).  I found my material at the wonderful shop Borovicks on Berwick Sreet in Soho.  I was originally looking for a pale blue, but the assistant showed me the peacock silk in the sunlight of the shop front and I was sold!  There was also matching silk habotai for the lining and georgette for the detachable train.

I followed the pattern pretty closely, marking the silk with thread tacks rather than chalk or carbon paper, so there would be no danger of it leaving marks and spoiling the dress.  Vogue patterns have always been my favorite of the commercial brands as they always go together really well with no fudging to get marks and seams to match.  My main deviation was the embroidery I designed to cover the top of the detachable train.

Bias cut layout.

many, many thread tacks!

Because the dress has a slight 1930's feel I wanted the beaded cover for the top of the train to have an art deco feel to it.  The design is very geometric and was inspired by some architectural elements I found in one of my many art deco books.  I used my embroidery machine to embroider a template to follow, then hand beaded all the gorgeous beads onto it by hand,  They were a mixture of Swarovski crystals and silver lined teal Toho seed and bugle beads  (I bought them from the marvelous online bead shop I-beads) .  It took quite a long time to make but was definitely worth the effort.  I made the motif as a seperate entity to the actual train so that you can wear the dress with the motif and the train, or just with the motif by itself.

Embroidered template

The detachable train is a really lovely idea and I added some more beads over the chiffon for extra sparkle, cos you can never have too much sparkle! The pattern went together really easily with no problems matching up seams and markings. So thats it, the tale of my wedding dress. I'll finish with a couple more of PaulmWhite's wonderful photos.

Wedding Pictures!

Yes, I know its been ages since we tied the knot, but I have at last sorted myself out (a bit) and uploaded a few of our photos.  I will do a post about my dress in a bit more depth once I've finished it- I started it ages ago but have been procrastinating ever since! Our photos were taken by the fabulous Paul White, who I cannot recommend highly enough. As well as being such an amazing photographer he is a really lovely chap who made us feel so relaxed that even Mr EB didn't mind being snapped!.

Our amazing 'Lego' cake made by my genus of a sister in law.

Bridaltastic!

Well despite me continuing heavy IV regime I have managed to do some work during the last couple of months!  Two more of my lovely friends from Lindy married their gentlemen friends recently and both brought their dresses to me for adjusting and adding some extra je ne sais quoi! The first nuptials were Katherine and Graham's, and as Katherine has the most gorgeous auburn colouring she wanted to add some extra teal aspects to her dress which would match her bridesmaids (which I also made for her)  Her dress was a lovely draped organza ballgown, with a lace up back and ruffle details.  She wanted to add a sash to highlight her teeny tiny waist, and add some sparkles to the flowers on the front. I only took a couple of photos in the workroom but you can see how pretty the sash looked-

I will try and get some pictures of the dress in action and post them soon. As usual my camera does not do just to just how lovely the teal coloured satin looks in real life.

The second wedding was that of Natalie and Geraint, and Natalie wanted a rather dramatic transformation for her dress! I must have chopped about 2 feet off the bottom of her skirt! Changing it from full length and  more, to tea length... This is the dress before-

and hopefully I will get a picture of the after from Natalie as I managed to forget to take the after shot- I was on IV's at the time! You can see in the picture of the front, that there was an asymmetric overlay to the skirt that stayed at tea length for a while and gave a natural length for the new hem line. I used the off cut of her skirt to make her a veil and two shrugs, one with 3/4 sleeves and one with little cap sleeves (and I still have several metres of the chiffon left!). 

 In the end she wore the short sleeved one during the day, and the sleeves when it got a bit chillier in the evening. I was lucky enough to go to both weddings and had a fabulous time at them both, I always love to see people I like wearing things I've had a hand in :-) Apologies for the lack of photos I will try and rectify this soon...

Peacock Green Dress

Oh dear, I really have not managed to keep up my blog well at all recently. What with December being a total disaster health wise, 2012 did not start much better as by the end of Jan I was back on the IVs, AGAIN!! I just can't seem to manage to go more than a month without them these days, which makes having any sort of normal life bloody difficult. I can't give definite answers to invites because chances are I won't be able to make it cos of my health. Work is totally stressing me out as I would hate to let any of my clients down, and I can't let the bridal clients down! I'm doing some alterations to friends wedding dresses and the thought of letting them down has left me with more than one sleepless night... so I am having to make very difficult decisions about what I am going to take on in future. I hate that yet again my bloody CF is dictating what my life has to be.

Anyway, rant over, one very good thing that I did manage to go to over the Christmas period was a wedding of Simon's friend and colleague Tom and his now wife Eden. They got married on New Years Eve in a gorgeous country house in Somerset. As the dress code was Hollywood Glamour it was an obvious opportunity to make myself a dress for a change, and of course a head piece to with it (see previous post). I decided to go for a colour I don't often wear, and don't have a dress in- dark green. I've had samples of silk from James Hare Silk for ages and I often order bridal fabric from them, but I've not had a chance to use their new heavier weight satin back crepe that comes in loads of utterly gorgeous shades. So I chose this beautiful peacock green satin and a fairly simple design as the fabric is so lush that it would be a shame to distract from it. Sadly, these photos really don't do the colour justice but you get a slight idea of how fabulously intense the colour is.

As I was stuck on IV's for sooooo long before Christmas, it was an excellent opportunity to do some beading on my dress. So whilst sitting with the drip going I would gradually add on more and more strings of iridescent blue and green beads around the neckline. Again the photo doesn't really show the colour very accurately.  It is surprising just how quickly I finished it, although with three sets of two hour drugs to drip in for two weeks, maybe I should not be so surprised....

Close up of the beaded loop at the centre front neck.

Real life photos of a dress in action!

Yes I know I have not blogged in a month-total hat a week fail! But to be fair,I have had the head cold from hell for the past month, although it feels more like a year... I'm back on the IVs in an attempt to stop it going to my chest, which to be honest has not worked as it has and I am producing more gunge than a bad horror movie-sigh. Also, as is so typical as soon as I feel really grotty I get loads of requests for work which I have tried to keep up with, but some requests have had to be refused as I simply don't  have time when I feel this crap-its so annoying! This cycle of IVs every four to six weeks is just getting me down. I nearly missed the GandS Reunion Ball which would have been awful.  I did manage to go for some of it, but that was with a line in (not a particularly attractive look!) and doing no dancing (boo hiss!) and leaving early.  Better than nothing, but still so frustrating. I would have loved to dance with my lovely friends, but at least I got to dress up and see them.  I will try and get some photos of Mr EB and myself in our finery (white tie no less) but I didn't take my camera with us as it doesn't fit into an evening bag! Hopefully some of my friends will have got some shots of us...

Anyway back to the point of this post, I have received some lovely photos of an unusual gold bridal dress I made earlier in the year and it is so nice to see it on a person not my dress dummy. Helen actually wants me to remake the fabric of her detachable train into another garment (watch this space!) and very kindly gave me these shots when she popped over a while ago to talk about this new project. I have to say I think Helen looks amazing! She just has the style and personality to carry off this fairly unusual and dramatic dress-

I love these pictures! She just looks so happy and I like to think her dress added to her enjoyment of such an important day in her and her husbands life:-)

A gorgeous dress for a gorgeous friend :-)

One of my favorite things about making wedding dresses is that occasionally I get to make one for a close friend. This time, I got to make a dress for one of my absolute best friends Anne Carter, now Jones! As Anne and her new husband Phil met whilst ballroom dancing, it was clear that dancing would always be an important part of the wedding. As Anne could not possibly jive (her favorite dance) or quickstep in her full length plus train bridal dress, she wanted a second shorter dance dress for the first dance and the evening reception. She very kindly asked me to make it. I was so happy she asked me and was just so pleased to see how beautiful and elegant she looked dancing in it with her new husband.  Actually, the whole wedding was totally wonderful, it was so great to see two such lovely people getting married and so happy together. I loved my dress and hairdo (as bridesmaid), the breakfast was just delicious, the photos on the beach were so much fun and playing croquet with friends I'd not seen in ages was fantastic, if not strictly adhering to the rules! I could carry on with this list for several pages, but I think it's pretty clear I had an amazing day! 

These photos are sadly not of Anne in the dress, but I'm hoping to put some of her official photos up once she has got back from her honeymoon and actually got them! It is a lovely knee length, prom style dress, with a fitted bodice covered in ruched chiffon and a flared two layer skirt of chiffon over satin. There was also a burgundy satin flower at the waist with the lace, but I had not finished that in time for these pictures....

The contrast burgandy lacing matched the colour scheme of the wedding-and looks really cool!



This is such a pretty lace motif, that I found on the web after trawling loads of shops!

An Unusual Gold Bride

Now that Helen has got married I can finally blog about her very unusual bridal gown.  I have been working on Helen's dress since before Christmas and it has been such fun to work on something so different from the traditional ivory dresses that I am usually commissioned to make. For a start, its a gorgeous rich gold. We found the fabric during a shopping trip to Borovick Fabrics on Berwick street in Soho. It is also transformable! The basic dress is a 1950's prom style gown with a full circle skirt and a sweetheart neckline.  It is supported by an amazing pouffy petticoat (this was part of the reason for my experiments-in-petticoats earlier in the year).

The petticoat is six layers of net at the bottom tier, the top three of which are ivory and the under three are scarlet to match Helen's shoes and handbag. Helen also wanted a large sash with a big bow at the back. This has to be the biggest bow I have ever made, it's huge and so girly-I love it!

This all seemed fairly standard in design terms, until she mentioned that she wanted a detachable train to wear as she walked up the aisle... Now this is a rather unusual addition to a 1950's design but she also said she loved the costumes in the BBC's Garrow's Law which is set in the 18th century, particularly the polonaise style of skirts worn by Lady Sarah Hill (the female love interest!). She didn't actually say polonaise there was much waving of hands and mutual cries of aren't they gorgeous dresses from us both- its great when you really understand what the bride really likes! Now, I totally loved Garrow's Law, especially the costumes and the 18th century is one of my favorite periods of fashion history, but it doesn't really go with the 1950's prom dress... or does it? Well, we think we came up with a pretty good compromise between periods with this detachable train that could be worn as a flat church length train or pulled up into a pollonaise like over skirt.

Here you can see the train laid flat at full length.  The sash is still in place and conceals the waistband of the overskirt.

 

 

With the train bustled up in a polonaise it just brushes the floor and means that Helen could dance in it as well. The way the fabric bunches up and folds is just lush! I love making dresses that can change throughout the day, and am really looking forward to seeing Helen's wedding photos when this rather fantastic dress will look even better than on my stand.