Making a wedding dress (part 3)

Last weekend was the point of no return with the dress. After considering many options regarding how to embellish the dress, we finally chose to embellish with ribbons and roses. I know it doesn’t sound very weddingy, but this dress is anything but that! It’s deep colour (purple) means that beads and crystals don’t show up very well, so we discarded our original idea of placing beading on the front. In addition, my daughter doesn’t want any lace on the dress, making it almost impossible to think of a design for beading or of overlaying lace. I think the colour would have been a problem here too.

So here’s what we decided. The ribbon is placed on the front in natural “sprays”, each one ending with a flower. We drew the design on spare pattern pieces and held it on her to ensure that there aren’t any badly placed flowers. I took the design and cut along the lines. Then, placing it carefully over the fabric, I pencilled the line onto the fabric with a fabric pencil. Each piece of ribbon was then tacked, and finally sewn with a metallic thread in a wide zigzag. I’m hoping that she’ll like the final effect as much as I do. I now have to sew together the bodice. The flowers will only be sewn on by hand when that is done.

I’ve placed the flowers on the fabric for the photos so you can see the effect. What do you think? I must apologise for the bad photography. I hadn’t realised there were so many shadows. Anyway, you get the idea.

The two bodice panels side by side.

Close-up of a flower.

Close-up of ribbon.

Bodice pieces side by side.