Petals

From this spectacular wedding, where FYI, the bride decorated her dress from Target (center, white/black dress).  I'm actually interested in the girl on the right in the pinkish flower petal dress.  Pretty?  Too obvious?  Makes for awkward arm positioning?  What do you think?

Pockets

One thing I think Bex' dress will need?

Pockets.

Some Inspiration

This is my mom. The day she married my dad. Isn't she lovely? You can't see the dress very well, but it's a pistachio green sleeveless v-neck, with a matching cape (yes, cape) with big tie-dyed looking sunbursts (yes, sunbursts). Handmade by someone. 1976. We lost the cape years ago, but I still have the dress, and here she is today.I've always loved the general fit and shape of the dress. Sadly, pistachio green has never been my color, and the fit is not quite perfect. But this is the dress that started it all. I told my mom that Courtney and I would be copying this dress, and she said oh so tenderly, "Oh honey, I'm sure you can find something better than that. That was just my choir dress." So that's the plan. Keep aspects of this style in mind, and build from there. Here are some other dresses that caught my eye for some reason or another...

(clockwise from top left: unknown, SHIHAR, Aida Coronado, Neiman Marcus, JCrew, Neiman, Aida, an Etsy sketch I can't find now)

So you can see some ideas taking shape. More to come...

Really? You're Making the Dress?

I wanted to back it up a little bit here, and answer a common question.  Who designs and sews dresses these days anyways?  Well for anyone that knows me or Court, this isn't a shocking turn of events.  But this is a very busy metro area, with lots and lots of stores, and with all the dresses on all the racks out there, I'm sure I could find one that I love.  But that's not the point.  Court and I have been friends for, ohhh, about 20 years.  We both come from crafty families.  Our idea of a girl's weekend is going to fabric stores, flipping through patterns, gossiping about the latest sewing and knitting blogs and how-to's, and admiring each other's fashion sense.  Seriously.  We do this. 

We both love to sew, and creating something from scratch, with your hands and effort, and then wearing it, and getting to say "I made this"... it's one of the most rewarding experiences.  So to do this together, and to be able to wear this dress for such a joyful occasion, what a gift!  For her and for me!  So this is why we're making the dress, and why I recommend handmade clothes or crafting for anyone else.  Because it's just oh so special.  

Seams

If you can't tell from my last post, I find a lot of inspiration and information on the web- in blogs especially! Until we start making our dress form, I'll be posting regularly about the great things I find that are guiding the work we'll do when I start sewing!

I wish I'd been able to follow this from the beginning, but thank goodness for archives! Hippo Bumpo recently had a 9-week seam-along and gave some great how-to's and pictures. French seams intrigue me and would be a potential choice for finishing the inside of Bex' dress, but she is a lucky duck because I also happen to own an overlocker!

It's important to think about seams from the beginning because I certainly don't want to 1) purchase too little fabric (seam allowances need to be factored in) and 2) can't forget about them when I'm sewing!