hello! Recently my lovely niece J married her long-time man and so of course I had to make a new dress for myself for the occasion… I was vaguely toying with the idea of shopping for fabric before I remembered two things: 1. as everyone in our family knows, J’s favourite colour is famously yellow, and 2. I have a piece of very yellow, and happily wedding worthy fabric in my stash already!
I bought this neon-bright yellow guipure lace from Mood Fabrics in New York City back in 2019, when I was over there with my friend Yoshimi… we met with other sewing ladies and they took us on a fabulous fabric shopping spree! Such fun. I wrote about it on my blog here… Originally I had envisioned making a little mini skirt from the lace but when the fabric was rolled out on the counter it turned out there was a pretty large chunk of the border cut out, so the salesperson basically threw that part of the fabric in for free. Meaning, I ended up with a lot longer length than I had needed. And obviously I couldn’t waste the extra bit by making that little mini, so it sat, awaiting some other project that could make use of it.Et voila!
I used the Closet Core Ceilo pattern with a few small modifications… namely; spicing the back yoke and back pieces together to eliminate that seam, including inseam pockets in the side seams, and I also cut it to be a bit more flared. Oh, and I also traced a size up – or maybe two? can’t remember now – for that fashionable oversized look. The hemline, which is of course the natural border of the lace, was determined by how much length I could get, and I also managed to get the sleeves on a border. It only took a little bit of pattern Tetris but I’m thrilled that I achieved what is one of my primary aims with any sewing project, which is to have minimal leftovers!
My dress is underlined completely with a pinkish/coffee coloured silk chartreuse that I bought from Fabulous Fabrics originally. I basted the lace and silk layers together within the seam allowance all around except for the side seams below the pockets, and then overlocked the edges before continuing to treat the two layers as one. The side seams below the pockets I stitched the layers separately and actually the lace is arranged so there’s not a “seam” in this part, but the lace motifs are arranged and hand stitched carefully so you can’t see a seam here.
I cut the pockets and neckline facings from a natural cotton linen that I’ve had in the stash for years, saved specifically for this same sort of purpose.
I chose this because the silk charmeuse wasn’t going to be stable enough in these areas – actually the lace is very heavy, far heavier than it looks! I cut the lace front and back to have side seam extensions along the pocket area and stitched it down carefully to the pockets inside. So, when you’re wearing the dress the lace appears to go all the way inside the pockets, no flash of offensive beige to be seen, so it looks really nice. 
The seams allowances around the neckline, especially the shoulder seam area here are seriously bulky, and I trimmed, clipped and understitched aggressively to get everything to sit nice and flat! I also went back later and stitched the facing to the silk underlining as far around and as close as I could get to the shoulder seams.
I’m including a picture of the happy couple because, although I did not make the dress, I did alter it to fit her and also did some minor repairs. This took three separate fittings and I took precisely zero photos of the process or anything. My only excuse is that I was also working on my own dress and stressing a little bit that I wasn’t going to get it all done on time.
Thanks to its oversized and loose nature, my dress was so comfy to wear and to dance in, and I was so happy about that! and just saying, I only wore these high heeled sandals for the ceremony and photos. For the reception on the same property I went to our car and switched over to my white sandshoes with little socks, brought for this very purpose. Much warmer, and fabulously comfortable for dancing! I also wore my new pink wool Sienna jacket for the cooler temperatures that came as evening fell too, but no pictures of that I’m afraid. Anyway, I hope I can get more use our of this dress, which actually turned out more lovely than I thought. 🙂
Hello! It’s been such a long time since I mentioned it no doubt everyone has forgotten; but at the beginning of this year I made a wedding dress for my daughter-in-law Lainey!
I also had the lace motifs coming down over the waistline to disguise that seam between sparkly tulle and no sparkly tulle. I carefully arranged the leaves to cover the seam as much as possible while trying to keep it organic.
I don’t think I took a picture of this? here’s a slightly blurry one from the professional wedding photographer… I constructed a grosgrain ribbon belt, stitched to the skirt seam allowance and hidden between the dress and lining just like I did with both Kelly and Cassie’s dress – you can just see it peeking out at the bottom right of the picture; and also a blue hand-embroidered plaque for their wedding date.
Hello!
I have very little else to say about this outfit, other than I felt really good and comfortable in it on the day, and am so happy I finally found a good use for this ultra-beautiful fabric.
Oh hey! I made a dress for my daughter! it’s a rather special one actually… 😉
So where to begin…well of course I’m teasing; my darling girl recently married her man D and this is her wedding dress, that I might have mentioned before once… or maybe twice, tops.
I’ll just quickly slot some shoe talk in here; when she decided upon a shorter skirt, the shoes became an important consideration… we searched and searched, trying on multiple pairs of lovely wedding shoes but then Cassie decided she wanted green shoes; and not just any green. She had the exact shade of green she wanted in mind, and anything else was just not going to cut it. What do you do in this circumstance? well you dye your own shoes, of course! We found a pair of pale bone/beige coloured suede sandals at Hobbs, with a nice low heel and straps to make them perfect for dancing, Cassie bought some Kelly green Rit dye from Spotlight, and over several painting sessions and rinsing in between, finally achieved the perfect shade of minty green. Aren’t they gorgeous?!
Cassie wanted her three cousins, my brother’s three daughters, to be her bridesmaids; and look how beautiful they are! It was so much fun and a totally lovely and enjoyable experience for me to make these dresses for my gorgeous nieces. I’d occasionally made little things for them when they were tiny, but truthfully it’s been a while. It made me very happy to create lovely things for them, and for Cassie’s special day too 🙂
Also, the pink spaghetti straps had a slightly elastic quality, and I did NOT want for them to stretch out over wear obviously!, so I threaded a length of cotton crewel thread through the straps, and stitched it to the straps themselves very firmly at the bodice junction; so this behaves like an ersatz “backbone” that provides hidden support and stops the straps from stretching. Just a little secret tip/trick that no one would ever know!
I also took the step of hand-basting the seam allowances of the pink bodice down after grading. I can’t explain exactly why I chose to take this extra step, just call it a hunch about a difficult fabric.
