Cassie’s wedding dress

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’ve already written about making the petticoats, three of them, in fact. Cassie loves to dance and was determined to do lots of it at her wedding, so wanted a beautifully twirly skirt. She also decided she wanted a shorter skirt, hitting above the ground, and wanted it to stand out full and stiff in a 50s sort of a way, which meant plenty of oomph underneath was required.

I made a very full tulle petticoat, and two simple full circle cotton voile petticoats; one to go underneath the tulle petticoat, close to her skin, for comfort; and the other one to go over the tulle petticoat to smooth out any lumps and bumps that the tulle might form underneath the silk skirt.

Full details of making these can be found here

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?!

Now back to the dress … maybe I should start with the fabrics? All were purchased at Fabulous Fabrics, and shortly after her engagement Cassie and I spent a highly enjoyable morning there playing with lots of beautiful laces and silks. And she chose the most beautiful of them all!! which we proceeded to cut up, overlay each other and generally re-arrange to become something totally and completely and utterly different from how they started. Sigh. That seems to be the story my wedding dress-making life, so far!

The bodice itself underneath all that lace is made of beige silk charmeuse, and the skirt itself is heavy duchess silk satin, just about the most divinely heavy and lustrous fabric I could imagine. So beautiful!!!

For a pattern, we started with Vogue 8470, and almost totally altered it of course. Just as I did with Kelly’s dress, Cassie had a firm vision about how she wanted her dress to be, and so we hunted for a pattern that had the right bones and started hacking. The bodice fronts of the pattern come down in a gentle V and are gathered underneath the bust into the middle bodice, and we gently re-shaped this into the shape Cassie wanted – she wanted more low-cut, for a start; and tailored to fit her which entailed a small bust adjustment, and made the gathers into a smooth dart instead. The middle part of the bodice is different too, a little shallower and with a flatter curve, to fit with the lace placement that she had designed. The bodice back of the pattern is a quite low-cut scoop, which we transformed to a full coverage back with a much higher neckline, right up to the nape of her neck.

I love the slight bustle effect of the lace peplum at the back! My favourite part of the back view

The skirt of this pattern is simple enough; a full circle, and I added large pockets. Pockets! in a wedding dress! just about every girl’s dream, right?! I’m not sure if she actually put anything into them, maybe just her hands I think! but at least they were there.

With the placement of lace on the bodice; this is 100% Cassie’s artistic vision and mostly her work too! Cassie wanted heavy coverage of well-defined “structural”-looking large scale lace over a gridded background; and I think she did an absolutely magnificent job! I had very little to do with this bit, just some technical advice and I did occasionally pick up the dress and do a little bit of hand stitching of lace when she wasn’t around; but the artistic placement and nearly all the stitching is totally her effort. My clever daughter!!

See the “grid” bit in the middle of the bodice? I did do that bit. We had some pre-beaded grid from one of our purchase lace, which we used here and there as a background in other parts of the bodice, but it was in small bits and pieces and the size of the remaining pieces weren’t enough to cover this part of the bodice. So this is all hand-done. Those bias strips of duchess satin were pinned down before attaching the lace, then hand-stitched on afterwards.

I had a tiny headache with the zip; Cassie wanted the bodice to be quite tight-fitting so I’d stupidly made the bodice quite tight-fitting; and didn’t take into account that fully hand-appliqueing something has a tendency to shrink it in a little bit. Halfway through all that hand-work one day, she tried it on and we could barely get the zip up … it was awful, I was terrified it was going to split! Fortunately, even though I’d been too dumb to think about the shrinkage thing, I had been smart enough at least to leave a nice wide seam allowance for the zip… so I could unpick the zip and re-insert it, letting it out a bit. Disaster averted! and when you’re hand appliquéing a random lace design like this it’s a simple matter to take off, re-arrange and add more lace motifs to cover up an alteration in an invisible way!

pre-appliqué…

Just like I did for Kelly’s dress, I added a grosgrain belt to the bodice/skirt seam allowance inside, with a sturdy skirt hook/eye to carry the weight of that skirt. It’s hidden underneath the bodice lining for the most part, and emerges just either side of the zip in two little buttonholes in the lining, so the girls could hook it up at the back before doing up the zip of the dress. I didn’t take any pictures of this bit unfortunately, but you can see what I mean in the post on Kelly’s dress here.

I was smart this time, and didn’t stitch on the hook and eye until AFTER I’d pushed the grosgrain ends through the button holes. I don’t think I mentioned this for Kelly’s, but when I made hers I stitched on the hook and eye very firmly and ultra-securely before trying to push them through those buttonholes in the lining. It took aaaaaages to carefully tease the metal hook and eye through those slightly-too-small holes! but I was determined and eventually got them through. It was like giving birth though; a tight squeeze! This time I did it right, though!

I don’t know what else to say… oh maybe only hemming the dress? This took a loooooong time… like a veeeeery long time. I think a whole full weekend, from memory; but that I mean two seven-hour days. I made a long cotton voile bias strip and stitched this to the raw skirt edge first, bound the edge, and then handstitched the bound edge in a deep hem. The skirt is just the teensiest bit shorter than the tulle skirt, because we both love the look of just a hint of tulle peeping out underneath. Of course, on the day I realised that when you’re standing up and looking down at the skirt from a normal head-height like every single person at a wedding, you can’t even see that tiny hint of tulle! it’s visible only when you’re lying down with your head on the floor dressmaker-style carefully measuring a hem! Haha!!

But I’m not even the slightest bit unhappy about that of course, my only thought when looking at these pictures of Cassie is that she is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen, and that making her dress was both a lifelong dream come true and the greatest and happiest sewing creation of my life. Oh dear, and now I’m NOT going to cry! Here, have a massive overdose of pictures instead!

this completely spontaneous snap is my favourite picture of Cassie and her cousins… yes I made their dresses too! all details of their dresses here

These earrings; this was her something old and something borrowed… Mum had some pearl earrings, and she also had some pearl earrings she had inherited from her own Mum; my grandmother and of course Cassie’s great-grandmother. Mum had great-Granny’s earring re-made from a clip-on to a pierced backing, and gave it to Cassie to wear at her wedding. This is so so special, it makes me well up a bit just to even think about this…

I actually made this polka-dot blouse for Cassie quite recently, I just haven’t blogged about it yet. Also; that Stormtrooper toiletries bag? I actually made that for Daniel a few years ago! the pattern is part of the Portside set by Grainline patterns

Wearing the earrings… also; Cassie’s hair…

Something blue; I embroidered a commemmorative patch to go inside Cassie’s dress, just like I did with Kelly’s… want to hear something crazy? I stitched, unpicked, and re-stitched this SIX times…