But, I’m not going to post pictures of it until the wedding in August. (Wouldn’t want the groom to see, would we?) 
Trust me, though, it looks awesome! She’s coming to pick it up tomorrow, and unless there are any little fitting changes that need to be made, it is completely finished! Yay!
Here’s what I’ve got on the “new” part of the dress so far… If you haven’t read the first part of this dress diary, please scroll down and read about it first.
This is a close up of the fabric. (click for larger image)
I realize it’s a bit see-through… That’s fine because it will have a lining that is thicker satin, so it won’t be see-through when finished.
Here’s the back of the bottom part.
It’s a bit puckery, but that is because my dress form is my size, and Ashley is much smaller. The puckers will come out when it is fitted to Ashley’s body. Also, the top of this part will have to be cut down into a “V” (see concept pics in the first post), so that will remove a lot of the puckers, too.
And this is the front of the bottom.
You can see here that I haven’t finished the front closed, because I wanted to get some curves into the hips, but with Ashley’s measurements being smaller than me and my dress form, I had to leave a little bit open in the front. I’ll sew it shut Sunday morning so that when Ashley comes for her fitting, we can slide it onto her and fix the curves to fit her exactly.
This is shaping up SO pretty!!!
Alright… I have been really busy with this one, so I haven’t been keeping tabs for what I intended to be a dress diary on this project. It is much too cool not to document, though, so I’m going to throw this out there as a beginning of this project and I’ll try to keep it updated as I go along…
A few weeks ago, this awesome chick named Ashley called me and asked if I could fix up her mother’s wedding dress so that she could wear it for her wedding in August. I LOVE doing this sort of thing, so I told her that I’d love to help her out, and she brought the dress over to my studio for me to see what we were working with and to discuss where she wanted to go with this thing.
Here is the dress as it was when she brought it to me:
(click pics for enlarged images)
It is a pretty dress, and would have been the talk of the town beautiful when her mother wore it in the early 80s. But, it’s pretty dated for a modern wedding. Ashley wanted to wear her mother’s dress, but wanted it to reflect her personal style, too. So… We talked about what she wanted. I was concerned because what she wanted was SO different than what we were starting with, and I didn’t know how much “destruction” of the dress she was willing to go for. But, she told me on that first day “Tear it up!” Her main focus was the fabric and “spirit” of her mother’s dress, not the original construction. She showed me some gorgeous dresses in a bridal magazine (I’ll scan a few of those in soon, too.) and told me what elements of those she really liked.
Basically, she wanted:
- a halter style neckline in the back, with an open back
- the front neckline to stay basically the same
- the sleeves removed (to be a sleeveless halter)
- the train to stay very similar, but detachable
- a sheath style mid-section
- a “mermaid” style bottom to the skirt
This was going to take some major finagling! But, I can see, especially now that I have de-constructed the original gown, that this is totally going to work out really well. The only problem I am seeing now is that with the back of the dress cut out, there may not be enough support in the front chest area (like there was with the original full back in place). So, I am going to try and come up with a spaghetti strap solution that Ashley will approve of (I hope… That’s the best I can come up with for this one right now…) Here are my concept illustrations for the gown when it is finished. (Kind of crude, but they are really just mock-ups so I can let Ashley see what I am trying to do with her dress.) (Also, the colors (beige and gray) in these illustrations are just to enhance the details; all of the colors of the lace and stripes match (well, are identical, “white-on-white”) in real life)
(click pics for enlarged images)
So far, I have separated the train from the bodice and front piece of the skirt, and separated the bodice from the skirt front and back. I have also removed the sleeves and an inner tulle lining that was falling apart (this is the only piece of the original that I will not be using at all, it was really beyond repair). The front part of the original skirt will become the front piece of the lower mermaid skirt of the new dress, to bring the styling elements of the old dress into the new dress. I will make bias piping of the white-on-white striped (new) fabric and use it throughout the dress to bring the new and old elements together.
I have made the sheath skirt and the mermaid bottom skirt of the striped fabric (the stripes are really faint, very “white-on-white” and barely there), and will be doing a test fitting on Ashley this Sunday. Once I have made that fit her and I am sure she approves of the design, I should be able to get it finished pretty quickly after that. I may need to do one more test fitting just before I finish off the seams and hems (I’m a big fan of professionally closed seams and hems, they look and feel better, but they are pretty “final”, so I’ll need to make sure they don’t need to be changed for fitting).
I’ll try to do a few more updates as I go along. If you don’t hear from me soon, message me on this post and remind me to give an update!!!