The woman in white

Here I am again, still skipping through those poppies…. So. About the wedding dress… Are you all feeling strong? Shall we get down to the finer details?

Right…

The look I was going for was a little bit Lord of the Rings Elvish, with a little bit of the elegance of a Grecian style pleated dress by Gres meets the Edwardian Pre-Raphelite idea of what a Medieval damsel would have worn. Phew.

My starting point for the pattern was a Badgley Mischka design, Vogue 1030. But only because I liked the skirt:

I got as far as mocking it up out of muslin and it only reaffirmed my belief that nothing promises quite so much but delivers so little as the empire line waist. It promises comfort and flattery and makes you look like you’re wearing a nightdress:

Isn’t that a bit, well, matronly?!? I loved the way the skirt fell, though, so I decided to use the skirt sections and drop the waistline. I took the skirt pieces and shortened the top edge to 1.5cm above the waistline point as marked on the pattern, following the curve of the top edge (the 1.5cm was for seam allowance). I also lengthened the actual hem by 5 inches (I’m tall…). In actual fact though I let the dress hang before hemming and the fabric stretched on the bias so much that I had to cut about 4 inches off before hemming! All the fabrics I used simply came from Whaleys of Bradford: wide medium silk crepe de chine, and heavy crepe back satin for the underskirt. The skirt has a large gathered panel at the centre front. Even working with a thing crepe de chine, the tightly gathered silk was bulky to work with in that area.

The pattern has two thin layers under the skirt proper. I decided to go for one thicker layer.This was probably a mistake because my fabric choice for the underskirt was poor. I used a heavy crepe back satin, which seemed stiffer in sample form than when I had 3m of it in front of me. I perhaps should have used a manmade fabric like an acetate to get the kind of light resilient stiffness I needed, but I couldn’t bring myself to use a manmade fabric in a wedding dress. To make the skirt proper go out a bit and not just twine around my ankles and trip me up, I decided to make the underskirt wider, which I did by taking the sides out. I also cut the front in two pieces and seamed down the middle, rather than one. When I hemmed the underskirt I used fusible Wundaweb in the hem to give it stiffness. This helped a little, but I still felt a little hampered by yards of silk round my ankles as I moved. I went for the satin because the lines of the dress meant a petticoat or slip might be visible and I didn’t want any transparency so I had to use a fabric with some substance.

I decided to keep the silhouette of the top half of the dress fitted. The pattern I used was actually a vintage bathing suit pattern from the 1950s, minus the cuff:

The reason I used this pattern is that the cut gives quite a moulded look, as it actually takes the bodice in close to the chest down the centre front, rather than just leaving a cavity of air. I mocked this up in a cotton drill and spent some time getting the fit right. I used this same cotton drill for the base layer, sewing in a layer of the underskirt satin on top as I went along, with rigilene boning machined straight on down each seam, but not on the curve of the bust seam.

I then draped and pleated crepe de chine freely on top. That was the hardest part. I started with the crepe de chine on-grain at the bodice centre front and worked outwards until it was on the bias at the flat sides so it stretched in more dimensions, and then tacked it as invisibly as I could by hand on the inside:

The hardest thing was doing that while simulating the curve of my shape inside it. I cut the edges and attached the bodice and skirt at the waist and inserted an invisible zipper. It was at this point things started to go a little downhill. I’d sewn the zipper in so close to the teeth that it was very invisible but would actually do up without much swearing and help. After reinserting the zipper I tried it on for the first time properly. I liked it. I made a bodice lining out of a thin cotton batiste, sewed it round the top of the bodice edge, turned it to the inside, understitched, and hand stitched the back edges and waist.

It was at that stage something began to bother me. Either I’d put on a bit of extra weight, or I hadn’t really studied the bodice properly when I’d tried it on. I tried to pretend I didn’t see it, but the fact that one of the pleats was strained over my bust to the point where it almost wasn’t a pleat any more. Was it OK? Could I live with it? It’s not as bad as you think, said Robin. It’s fine. But if you want to fix it, we can take some of the fullness out of some other pleats and redistribute it. I started to cry, explaining the amount of unpicking that had to be done, explaining that it wasn’t that simple as redistibuting the fullness would mean the top layer of crepe de chine edges wouldn’t be sewed in, and that it was all a disaster and I was just going to buy one. The dress was left for a day. And then I picked it up and began the unpicking process. Pleat fullness was redistributed. The lining was sewn back in. And it was better.
And I was glad I’d done it.

The sash was simply a long strip of crepe de chine, hemmed and cut on an acute diagonal across the ends. The buckle is a late Edwardian/1920s affair I picked up on ebay. I replaced some of the stones from some old broken costume jewellery I had stashed using superglue. The sash simply threaded through the belt (rather than the belt being able to unclasp and separate in the middle) and knotted at the back.

I bought some metal bra straps and sewed a couple of ribbon hooks inside the bodice to hold them. I’d never worn a strapless dress before and if it kept heading South I’d simply slip the straps in. Actually, surprising enough it held up for the day and I didn’t use the straps at all.

Originally I was going to make a sheer jacket/robe/ bolero with big medieval elvish sleeves and beading etc etc, but time defeated me. It was a week before the wedding, and my brain was so addled I couldn’t think straight. I was also rapidly approaching sewing burnout point, so I decided just to buy something instead. All googling permutations didn’t turn up much, until I came across an inexpensive lace bolero on ebay from graceandflaironline. (They come in other colours too. If tempted, and dithering between two sizes, go for the smaller size.) I sewed on some clear silver-lined seed beads round the sleeves and neckline.

The elvish circlet was also an ebay purchase from unfauxgettabledesigns, and the necklace was one I’d picked up some time back in an antique shop in Bath.

Coming soon: the lowdown on Robin’s groom outfit!