The doily dress

The time has finally come when I can reveal the purpose of all the doily making.  Let me present....

...my wedding dress!

As soon as I saw Jillian's  beautiful creation on Pinterest I thought that it would be wonderful if I could recreate something similar for myself.  She says that she made her dress in two weeks - that girl must crochet like lightning!  As documented here, I have been slowly making doilies for over a year (just in case).  This work was also interspersed with other crochet and quilting projects.  Around six months ago my partner and I decided to finally take the plunge and get married, so the project stepped up pace. 

I was very nervous about how the dress would turn out, after all, your wedding dress is guaranteed to get a lot of scrutiny! I am so happy and relieved that it turned out like I hoped. Here are some more pictures from the big day!

The nitty gritty

For those who like to know the hows and the whys, here are all the details of how I made the dress.

First I made a base dress. This is made using Vogue 8897 in blue polyester satin.
Next I used the same pattern pieces to make a net copy of the dress. The net is to give the doilies support, so that the weight didn't drag them out of shape.

All the doilies were made individually following patterns found free on the internet. I've counted them all, and there are 116 doilies on the dress; these vary from the biggest at over three foot, to teeny tiny ones an inch across. I wanted to only use each pattern twice, but there weren't enough very small patterns, so there are about a dozen of the tiny gap-filling flowers.

Using many, many safety pins, I arranged the doilies on the dress and then sewed them by hand to the net layer. It was essential to use a dressmakers dummy for this, as I needed the doilies to take the shape of the dress.

The net and the satin layers are only joined at the back, where I sewed the two together down each side of the zip. I didn't want an obvious line to show the zip, so I used hook and eye fasteners to close the doilies over the top.

I can remove the doily layer and have a very wearable blue satin dress. I am undecided what to do with the doilies now. They are all cotton, and sewn on with cotton thread, so one possibility is dying these to a less bridey colour.  After all this work its a shame to only wear it once!

Ditzy dress

This is my first ever foray into dressmaking. It has been a very, very steep learning curve. I had thought that the transition from patchwork to dressmaking would be easy.  Sewing is sewing, right?

Little did I realise that there are actually two distinct skill sets involved with dressmaking: sewing (which is surprisingly different to patchwork), and fitting. The dress is McCalls m6959, and is classed as "easy". I struggled with every process in making this dress, and re-sewed several of the seams in order to get them pattern perfect. Then I tried the dress on, and it was awful! It fitted like a sack, and made me look totally tubular! Also the sleeves were far too taut, and I couldn't lift my arms away from my body without the whole dress feeling like it would rip across the middle.

So, having painstakingly sewn the whole thing so accurately, I took my dress along to class where the teacher pinned, and tucked, and adjusted until every single seam had to be re-sewn again. The mistake I had made was to cut the size corresponding to my largest measurement (waist). This meant that the bust and back darts all needed adjusting to bring the dress back in. What I should have done was to cut according to bust size, and adjust outwards at the waist. You live and learn. 

I'm not sure whether the arm problem was due to poor pattern drafting, or my physiology. It wasn't due to picking the wrong size. Although the circumference of the sleeve fitted neatly around my arms, and looked great with my arms hanging by my side, there was no movement at all. To solve this, I followed these tutorials (here and here)  and flattened the sleeve head. This would have meant that the original crescent shaped sleeve would have ended up very short. To counter this, I had to change the bottom of the sleeve from a concave to a convex curve. To give even more movement, I made this curve slightly longer than the original, thus increasing the diameter of the sleeve for more ease .

The third adjustment I made was to the length of the skirt. I added two inches to the original pattern, and this fell at mid knee. In the end I felt this was a bit frumpy, so cut an inch off again. I'm not entirely sure this was a good move, as although I prefer the shorter skirt, it now ends at just above my  knobbly knees, which is not such a great look either.

So, here is the final dress. I am very pleased that it looks like a proper dress. I am happy with my fabric choices. But, I'm pretty sure it won't turn into a favourite. Despite the arm adjustments, it is still annoyingly restrictive. The skirt is also a bit hit and miss. Because of the fullness, it has a tendency to flare up in the wind. Despite a safety pin holding the wrapover together, I had several Marilyn Monroe moments on a breezy seaside stroll. The other problem is that the fullness in the skirt has a tendency to all gather over my backside, which is not an area where anyone wants to add bulk.

I started this dress in January, and it was finished in mid April, just in time for some spring sunshine. So, one item crossed off my projects list this month, and a good dent in the fabric stash.