Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Maternity Wedding Dress

I love my cousin and his wife.  Otherwise, I don't think I would have been able to power through this project.  If I were a better, more experienced and knowledgeable seamstress it would not have been so hard, but I had never sewn anything like this before.   There are not many maternity dress patterns for sale that would be appropriate for a wedding dress, and even less that don't suck.  I found that out the hard way when we took a trip to our Joann's store.  I also looked online, with no luck.  I thought I would try to take a high waisted dress bodice and add on a maternity gathered skirt, but had no luck making a muslin that would fit.  I found that a high waisted dress pattern bodice just wouldn't do, so I took the only semi-promising maternity pattern I could find, Burda 7630, and got down to business.

 
I thought I would sew her the short version of this dress to wear to the rehearsal dinner and/or honey moon or whatever as a practice run for the real dress.  I didn't bother making a muslin because this fabric we chose for this was pretty inexpensive and the only part I had doubts about was the bodice, which didn't take too much fabric. 
 
 
I should have bought extra fabric, though.  That would have been smart. This bodice pattern, as written, is horrible.  It has one layer of light slippery fabric for the bodice that is supposed to hold up the gathered front of the skirt.  Then the sheer fabric over that is gathered very awkwardly between the boobs.  Nothing worked for me.  It could have been partly poor execution, but I have seen other attempts at this pattern by fellow bloggers, and am convinced it is essentially flawed.  I didn't even take a picture of her in it.  It was so bad we both almost cried. The gathered sheer fabric sagged down and the dress pulled itself down in the front and the seams of the one layered bodice were pulling just from the weight of the skirt.  I ripped the bodice off the dress and threw it away. I told her not to worry we still had time to make it right.  I then got to work designing a new bodice.  I decided to line the bodice so that there were now two layers of the light slippery fabric and then put the sheer fabric over the outside bodice layer baste it together and treat it as one fabric to get rid of those awful gathers between the knockers.  They were not flattering and contributed nothing to the shape and lay of the dress.
 
 
These are the notes I drew up when I was brainstorming.
 
 
Here is the first try.  I added a side dart and had to fix it so the seam would still line up with the bodice back.
 

 
This is the pattern that I used to make the muslin. Front and back bodice pieces. 

 
Here is the bodice muslin. I altered the pattern a bit further after this because I was a bit nervous about her not having enough room to grow in the bust. She would be expanding, I knew from experience.
 
 
This lower picture is of the final pattern I used for the dresses.

 
 
Can you believe it? This is the only picture I have of this dress. That is me holding it up in front of myself, and my daughter snapped the picture with my phone. No make-up and my hair was flat.  When I get really into a sewing project, you are lucky if I take a shower or remember to cook dinner. I sent this picture to Julie's phone to tell her she needed to come try it on.  After she tried it on and it fit, the sparkly ribbon trim pictured above was sewn, by hand, along the bottom of the bodice for that extra little touch.  It looked very nice.  You will have to take my word for it. I took the left-over sheer blue fabric, narrow hemmed the edges and she used it as a wrap when she wore this dress for the rehearsal dinner.  It was a chilly October evening, but luckily she, being 8 months pregnant, was her own raging furnace of hormones.  She didn't freeze to death.
 
Now that I had a working pattern, I got to work on the wedding dress.  I increased the length of the skirt to barely graze the ground in the front and lengthened and filled out the back for a small train.    The fabrics she chose were the most beautiful color, and the sheer fabric over that was a sturdy tulle with embroidery and beading and scalloped edges. The scalloped edges made matching up the bottom edge of the dress panels a bit challenging, especially with the added train, but it was too beautiful to say no.
 
The lining fabric - a nice cream colored satin. 

 This picture shows the heavily beaded and embroidered bottom edge of the fabric.  The embroidery and beading gradually faded out towards the top.  Luckily, the fabric was wide enough to cut the skirt panels across it ending at the bottom edge. 

This is a picture of the more delicate, light embroidery around the middle of the fabric. The color looks more white in these pictures than it was.  I was really just a hint lighter in color than the cream colored lining fabric.
 
Here is the finished product.  I put a sequin trim around the bottom of the bodice and hand top stitched the neck and armholes.  Our dress form was wearing a trash bag because my daughter was getting ready to make a duct tape corset.  She is so creative.  There is no belly on the dress form but you can see the extra gathers there and the rise in the bodice front where a belly could fit.  I tacked the skirt to the lining along the hemline to make it drape nicely and stay together for the pictures.

 
Here is the beautiful bride on her big day.
 
 
It was an outdoor wedding in October. You can probably guess what happened:

 
It didn't dampen there spirits at all.  You can imagine what her hem looked like at the end of the day.  She seemed worried about it at first, (only because her mom scolded her) but I told her she would never get to wear the dress again, and it was her dress to have fun in. If you miss out on anything at your wedding just to keep your dress clean, that is just silly.  We hope her daughter won't need a maternity wedding dress, right?  Well, at least she will have a cousin that can sew her one if she does.  She also had a wrap made from the organza I used for the veil.  She wore it a little when she got cold.  Here is the garter I made as well.
 
 
Well, it is a bit bulky and stiff.  I added a little blue ribbon bow, for the something blue.  It stayed up and fit nicely, though.

 
This is the comb detailing I made for the veil.  I broke the butterfly and flowers off of a hair clip from Claire's and sewed that along with sequin trim onto the comb and gathered veil made of off-white organza.  We couldn't find a draping tulle that matched the dress color.  The tulle that was in the dress was way too stiff and heavy with all the beading. Believe me.  I tried it.

 
I embroidered these linen hankies for the bride and groom.  I wanted them to be a wedding day present, but I didn't have time to finish them so they became Christmas presents. The words are: "Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  It is the quote they chose for there wedding invitations, from Harry Potter, or also the Bible.  She is a big Harry Potter freak, but her parents are very traditional, so it fit for everyone.  The wedding was beautiful with pumpkins everywhere and orange fall leaves and colors. The owl is supposed to be Hedwig and the red dragon is for my cousin.  I just thought he would like it.
 


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