Jo-Anns, Jo-Anns, and more Jo-Anns - Buying fabrics

For a while I thought I wanted shantung, a silk fabric with rough lines that run through it giving it a pretty and interesting texture.  I went all over looking for it, to specialty stores and multiple Jo-Anns.  I finally found something very close in one an hour away--a silk dupioni.  They didn't have a color that was quite right (I wanted an ivory white that wasn't too yellowy), but I bought ten yards of their whiter shade anyway.  With a coupon, it was still quite expensive!  It was silk after all!

Silk dupioni, similar to what I bought.

Later, I had many moments of questioning how I was going to sew such a finicky, expensive fabric.  I realized that there was a very real possibility of there being rain on our wedding day, and I didn't want to have to hide my silk dress and myself from getting any drops on us.  (Good thing I anticipated this, because it poured!  ...Then stopped and was damp but lovely!)

photo of rain

I decided to go with something that was not silk.  I returned the expensive shantung silk, and instead got a related fabric that is less textured but a better color, better price, and much more forgiving of the elements.  I picked a polyester taffeta in ivory, and it was lovely.  Just a little shine, just the right amount of weight to it.  I also found a neat mirror organza that reminded me of water, which my husband, a fisherman, loves.  And I found an adorable dotted sheer fabric that I wanted to find some way to use.  I had taken my husband with me to pick fabrics since he is more decisive than I am, and he encouraged me to go for that pretty dotted sheer.  I'm glad he did!  I love how it worked in the waistband and sash I later designed into the gown.

Here you can see the dotted sheer at the bottom right, and the ivory taffeta above it,
as I made the waistband for the gown.  More of the sheer would become a long sash to tie in a bow.

I'd revisit Jo-Anns many times for things like a zipper, threads, tulle and beads and comb for the veil, boning, more boning, more boning, interfacing, horsehair braid, elastic, and a hook for the waist-stay band.  I used many coupons.  I also bought things that were going to last me beyond this project:  a pressing ham, transfer paper and wheel, a proper seam ripper, and a ruffler foot I'd been coveting for a while.

Ruffler foot!  The thing sounds like a demon eating its way through the fabric, but
it does a great job of making very regular pleats that are essentially ruffles.  It took a little
practice to get the hang of it and get used to the noise, but this fun toy helped me make a strong pleated skirt.

Dressing Glinda - First steps in designing the bodice

With Glinda ready for action, and about ten yards of cheap cotton from Jo-Ann's (soon to be my most-frequented store, surpassing Lowes that had sucked us in as new homeowners a year prior), I was ready to begin draping!

The plain cotton was the cheapest way to experiment with pattern design, and for practice dresses, known as muslins.

I ended up being able to use that amount of cotton for design processes, a full-length practice dress that later became a sewing-table cover when I worked with fancier fabrics, and also some of it got used in the preservation of the dress!

 I pinched and pinned and laid the fabric over Glinda's chest, working to make symmetry out of a formless piece of fabric.  After plenty of re-working, I had it looking like sort of the almost front part of what would hopefully be the bodice I imagined.  I drew on the basic cotton where the neckline would be and tacked (loosely hand-sewed) along that line, and along the waistband area.  Then I snipped off the excess fabric that had been obscuring my view of Glinda and how this thing really looked on her.  I marked where the pleats were, and crossed my fingers that I'd be able to match them back up once I unfolded the fabric!  Then I unfolded it!  It created essentially a pattern for the front piece of the bodice.  It was just a matter of reversing the process using a new piece of fabric.  Simple, right?  We'll see.  Before going into that, I used tracing paper to transfer the shape and pleat marks onto newsprint to serve as a pattern for future work and alterations I might make.

The pattern I used for the bodice liner.
You can see the dress in the photo below
behind Glinda, from when I tried it on her.

There was also behind-the-scenes work at this stage.  The fancy pleated bodice I was designing needed a lining to support it and protect it on the inside while being worn.  I began making that with the lining pattern from a dress that I liked, which had about the right neckline and waist height.  I gave it a couple alterations to make it more generic looking and help the back dip down into the "V" I wanted, and tried it on Glinda.

It turns out I'm built crooked (one hip is distinctly bonier on Glinda, and I realized that's because it's bonier on me, and one shoulder is higher).  I had to do some alterations to get it to fit very smoothly across Glinda's torso and to get the side seams to lay in the right spot.  This kind of detail is part of what makes for good quality "couture" sewing.  Ideally, at some point I'll make what's called a sloper, which is a very basic pattern that is perfectly tailored to the person it's for.  I was making a lazy sewist's sloper in a way, just covering enough of the mannequin to manage this one project.  One of the uses of this liner pattern would prove to be quite the challenge later, as it turned out.

The bodice pattern wasn't quite a right fit for me (the original dress wasn't either unfortunately...), so I used tailoring techniques like pinch-and-pin to get a right fit, essentially making my own pattern based on the original.
You can see the tape on Glinda showing where I was thinking about putting removable straps.
I decided they didn't look good and weren't worth the work.

When I had the first "draft" on Glinda, I pinned it into a better fit and marked where seams should ideally be (since in this process they get moved).  I then sewed along the pinned lines, then recut it apart along the "new" seamlines I'd drawn so I could trace the new altered pieces onto paper (adding 1/4" for seam allowance).  Then use that new pattern to cut new fabric, re-sew, re-try-it-on, and hopefully get a perfect fit at that point!  It took a few tries and happened over the course of at least a day or two.

To add seam allowance when I re-made pattern pieces,
I used my sewing gauge and made notches around the outside,
connecting the dots with my fancy new clear quilting ruler.
To cut them out cleanly, I used my new half-off rotary blade and that ruler.

In this photo, you can also see the marks foreshadowing the difficulties I would later have
with getting the lining to transition from the fashion (outer) fabric along the top edge of the inner bodice,
where it might be partially visible, to the lining fabric that would line the rest of the gown.

You can also see the special silk pins with glass heads I bought to prevent melting under the
iron and snags in fancy fabric.  They were very narrow and bendy, so I lost a few along the way, but most survived.

Initial imaginings - Gathering ideas and making the mannequin

Once I had decided to sew my own gown (which was a tentative choice for a while still, with the option to always cave and buy something), I began by deciding what it should look like.  My gown board on Pinterest provided inspiration.  I circled elements I liked in the gowns prior to shopping to give the clerks an idea of what to pull for me.  On this new, independent path, I had to narrow it down further, and move the image in my mind into more concrete terms.

You can see in the red dress inspiration for the bodice, and in the striped one inspiration for the skirt shape!
The rest of my gown pinboard is here, where there's evidence of shopping for discount dresses, too.

I chose to create a dress with a bodice that had vertical pleats that are closer at the bottom and wider at the top, with a sweetheart strapless neckline.  I expected this would give me a less rectangular, more curved shape up top.  For the back, I wanted a v-shaped line that went down to my mid-back, accentuating my shoulders that I like.  (I was working out with a focus on my posture to help them look even better.)  As for the bottom half... the pockets were a given!  And the rest of skirt was something I wasn't sure how to design at first.  I figured I'd experiment with how much gathering would be needed to create the "pouf" at the top.  And I thought I'd just play with widths of fabric to get the right amount of fullness.

Um, no thanks Simplicity...
not really what I'm going for.

I shopped for wedding gown and formal dress patterns, any patterns really, looking for these elements.  I found things here and there that seemed kind of like what I wanted, but I wasn't confident anything could quite get it.  There are surprisingly few, and surprisingly icky wedding gown patterns out there.  I had my creative vision and wanted to try to make it happen; if I was going to make my own gown, I was going to make MY gown, not something halfway there!

I had read about draping in one of the books I got started with in my research and thought it might provide the answer to the lack of patterns.  Draping is using a mannequin and laying fabric on it in the ways you want it to ultimately look.  I'd never done it before, but with some YouTube videos I figured out the gist of it and felt ready to give it a try!

Before I could drape, I needed a mannequin.  And I did not want to buy one (nor did I think they sold them in my actual shape and size, and I wanted this gown to fit perfectly).  Thanks to the wonders of the internet and other people's dedication to demonstrating solutions for strangers, there are lots of resources and methods for making mannequins out of duct tape online.  I followed this one  and my helper was my mom.  Bless her for not batting an eye when I asked her to duct tape me from neck to thigh, and even when I took my shorts off from under my long t-shirt in order to get a better fit.  She was on her knees for quite a while, since she's the kind of crafty, dedicated mom who will make sure the duct tape lays smooth around the curves of my bum if that's what the plan calls for.

The mannequin detour of this journey is one of the big under-estimates on time.  It took four hours to make the tape form for the mannequin, NOT including making a stand, stuffing it, and closing off the ends.  I took the creepy half-person, empty duct tape shell back to my house and taped up the seam where we'd cut it off of me.  I made a stand from a tall piece of wood and some other scraps from the garage (I don't just DIY with fabric, hubby and I do stuff with wood, too).  I got it so the thing would be my height if I was wearing a typical pair of heels.  Once I had it suspended, I stuffed the heck out of it with all the paper I hadn't recycled during grad school, and then some.  Then, I sealed the arm, neck, and thigh holes, and used expanding foam intended for insulation to inflate and support the less-stuffed areas through tiny incisions.  It probably took a good couple more hours at least to finish the mannequin.

In the end, all this was worth it... meet Glinda!  She's helpful and wears pretty dresses, hence the name.  Glinda's been helpful for other projects since the gown was finished.  She's a prankster, though--she's fooled me or my husband into thinking there was a person where there shouldn't be more than a few times.

Choosing my gown - Visiting bridal shops and why I made my own gown

The decision to sew my own wedding gown came gradually.  I "shopped" Pinterest to collect ideas, just as if I were going to buy a gown.  I tried on dresses in a handful of stores, looking for prices my partner and I would be willing to pay.  At the same time, I also had a image forming in my mind of what I wanted in a dress, and was having difficulty finding one with all the qualities I wanted.  I wanted a sweetheart neckline that I know looks best on me, strapless; I wanted it to have a skirt that poufed out of the waistband and fell in a gentle bell-like shape, not too big, but also not small; and I wanted it to have pockets.  Nothing in the stores had pockets.  Also, nothing in the stores had a cup size small enough to avoid embarrassment for my flat frame.  I was bound to pay as much for the tailoring and cup fillers as for the gown itself, besides the work of adding pockets.

The original concept drawing.  Don't make fun of my art skills, I wasn't really trying.

As I tried on dresses, I kept my second agenda in mind: see how these things were constructed.  I knew from some initial reading that wedding gowns should be made strong, and that large dresses needed to have certain qualities in order to hang right.  They needed an elastic waist-stay band inside to help the dress stay up (for a strapless dress, this is the secret to avoiding constantly pulling it up; it should be supported by the hips, not the chest--fortunately for me!).  I also took a look at how many skirt layers there were, the kind and placement of boning pieces in the bodices, and how the bodices and skirts were attached to each other.  I noted how hanging straps were attached, how large the underskirts were, and other details of their making.

This was probably my favorite I tried on--but out of my budget!

I knew in general what to look for because I'd already read some books on couture sewing from my university library, and from my prior experience with the making of a dress.  I knew it is always more complicated than I think starting out.  That did not stop me from grossly underestimating the time it would take for me to make my gown.  My husband likes to remind me that early on I suggested three days should suffice.  SO. WRONG.

It would take me approximately 100 hours to make my wedding gown.  This includes everything from my research and drafting stages, though to fabric shopping, muslin practice gowns, and all the many steps of creating the actual gown.  Plus my veil.  Because, how could I sew my gown and not make my own veil?  The veil took about 10 hours of the above total.

How it began

Unlike many brides, I didn't dream of what my wedding would look like from an early age.  I had no idea what kind of gown I wanted, and felt no need to decide before becoming engaged in June of 2013.  Yet when it came to the time in my life when I had the chance to choose that special dress, one of my first thoughts was "maybe I could make my own gown."  That thought persisted and grew over the course of about a year.  For some months I tested it out, telling others "I'm kind of considering this..." and got some lukewarm responses.  Few people know how to really sew, and even fewer attempt such a big and important project.

Many people asked me if I already knew how to sew when I was in the process of making my gown.  I think it would have been really difficult to go through this project if I hadn't had some amount of prior experience.  I credit my mom and grandma with teaching me to appreciate sewing at a young age.  I started as the subject of their projects, wearing costumes, dresses, and even a winter cape they made.  Later, I made my own first project, a small pillow with lace trim, pieced together from scraps in my grandma's huge chest of fabrics.  From there, I went on to design doll clothes for my Barbies and American Girl doll, using scraps, basic stitches, and imagination.  Basically no planning.  Eventually I learned to follow a pattern, trying out quilting under my grandma's guidance and making some clothes for myself with my mom's help.  Most of the time, though, I just altered clothes to fit my narrow frame.  I bought my own sewing machine with my first paycheck during my freshman year of college, and used the machine to continue altering clothes, and to sew a dance costume and Halloween costume for friends.  Sewing has always been something I can return to, even when I take a break to focus on school.

In the summer of 2014, though, I had a special opportunity to reverse the focus.  I graduated from my master's program and had three months before beginning doctoral work.  It was the perfect time to take on a crazy project... I decided to sew my own wedding gown.