Friday, October 30, 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
50s Inspired Minty Tulle Bridesmaid Dresses - McCalls 6466
I'm so excited to finally be making this post!!! It has been a long time coming. Last year I was honored to make 5 bridesmaid dresses for a dear friend of mine who loves vintage style as much as I do. She chose McCalls 6466, a super fun dress with TONS of tulle.
When I read reviews, a lot of people ended up cutting out some of the tulle, and we considered it at first, but the more I thought about it, the more I wanted to go all out. I mean, that's what's so fun about this dress, right?
The first thing I had to do was find matching tulle, though. We ordered some mint, but it was a bit greener than the other fabric, so I started trying to mix and match tulle to add a little blue in. You can see the difference here!
The skirt uses essentially 36 yards of tulle! We did 4 layers of the mint, one of the light blue/aqua, and one of the dark green which worked really well. Here's what my line-up of tulle looked like after I had cut out all the panels for the skirt!
And here's how it looked as I sewed, lol. Patience, patience, and more patience was needed as I added layer after layer, and then gathered them all together. I couldn't wait to see how it all looked together!!
Finally got it all together and on the dress form. LOVED the result!!
Then I got to fit all the dresses on the girls. For one of the fittings, my friend Stephanie came over to shoot! It was so much fun, and we got some great shots! Check out Stephanie's photography page on Facebook here. :-)
Such a fun time! Finally, once all the dresses had been fitted, the day had come. The gorgeous bride wore her grandmother's vintage dress at the ceremony, which her grandmother made herself!
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| I made Mom's purple MOB dress too! :-) |
Then she had another fabulous vintage dress to wear at the reception!
And I was able to snap a quick pic with all the ladies! Oh, did I mention one of them was expecting?!?! Lol! We altered hers to have a stretchy back, and fortunately it worked out well! It had me a little nervous in the months leading up, though, haha.
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| I think this expresses how we should all feel when wearing a super full twirly tulle dress! ;-) |
Thursday, October 15, 2015
Red Floral Toile McCalls 7086
This is one of my latest commissioned dresses, McCalls 7086.
I always love when there are sleeves without having to set them in!
The shape and fullness of the skirt is just right. I added pockets of course!
Also added some netting on the skirt lining for a bit of fullness.
I did my usual hand picked zipper.
I definitely want to make one for myself at some point!
Friday, October 9, 2015
Wednesday, October 7, 2015
Halloween Regency Dress
It's hard to miss all the Halloween fabrics and patterns in the fabric stores along with the influx of people venturing into the world of sewing around this time of year! I love it (though admittedly I avoid fabric stores on the weekends during October if I can help it!)
I've loved the possibility present in costumes since I was a little girl, I always loved dreaming about what I could be for the next Halloween! Usually this involved some form of pretty dress. But now that I can make my own clothes and costumes, it means I can make my dreams reality any time I want. This is what I love about sewing!! I'm in the process of helping my niece with her costume dreams, which I'll be blogging about once finished. It is going to be amazing!
One of the costuming dreams I'd had since beginning to sew was to make a regency dress, which ended up being my first dress using a pattern! A couple years later, one of the first years in our new home (and where we have TONS of trick-or-treaters!) I thought it would be fun to whip up a quick Regency dress in a blue ticking stripe to hand out candy in. It was a quick job, with raw seams on the inside, but it did the job as a wear-once kind of costume!
I did add elastic to the sleeves, which gave it a cute little ruffle on the hem which I loved!
I made it as a pullover dress, so without any buttons or any closures. In order to pull it in a bit under the bust, I just grabbed a pin, stuck a bow on it, and used it like a brooch.
