10 Days until the wedding!

Time is run­ning out and we’ve resort­ed to plan B:

Kate wears this.

What do you think?

Total­ly Jok­ing! This well endowed dress was con­coct­ed at my sis­ter’s bridal/lingerie show­er . It was too fun­ny to not share with you!

This activity/game was so much fun! I high­ly rec­om­mend it to any­one throw­ing a bridal show­er (espe­cial­ly for the seam­stress­es out there)!

“News­pa­per Wed­ding Gown” Rules: 

Split the par­ty into 5 teams. Each team cre­ates one piece of the dress: skirt, bodice, train, sleeve or veil. Each team has 10 min­utes to cre­ate their piece. Extra points for being cre­ative with your choice of news­pa­per arti­cles or words.

Can you guess who won the challenge?

Team Bodice took the win! And since I’ve yet to fin­ish Kate’s wed­ding top- Kate may walk down the aisle with her lace/silk skirt and news­pa­per top 🙂

Mak­ing the Top/Blouse

My sis­ter made 2 requests for her top: (1) Cov­er her shoul­ders and (2) Reusable (She can wear it again!)

Sounds easy- right? Well, this  request is a bit tricky and has added extra work/time to my already very tight schedule.

From the start, we began work­ing along a fine line between casu­al & ele­gant. I think cre­at­ing her wed­ding dress with sep­a­rates (and using dif­fer­ent shades of white and ivory for the fab­rics) added a touch of casu­al from the begin­ning. So when I cre­at­ed my first mock-up for the t‑shirt/top, the top made the dress look far too casu­al and did not fit the occa­sion (at all). (It had to much ease and the sleeves were too big.)

Above you can see the sec­ond mock-up. (Yes- The sleeves are set-in poor­ly! But, it’s only a mock up and I need to cut cor­ners if nec­es­sary!) I am still not hap­py with this top. The set-in sleeve (the sleeve you see in the pho­to) make the attire look casual.

I slight­ly ripped the top, so that Kate could push the sleeve­less strap slight­ly off the shoul­der. We agreed this small cap sleeve (with no set in sleeve) looked more ele­gant. Below are some oth­er examples/options we are look­ing at. Shop these pat­terns here.

Moth­er of the Bride Dress Update

This week I’ start­ed the moth­er of the bride dress! To make things eas­i­er for myself, I chose to make her a dress using Bur­daStyle Mag­a­zine’s pat­tern.

I love these Euro­pean pat­terns and thought it would be fit­ting to use them for my sis­ter’s wed­ding! I chose a sim­ple shift pat­tern with slant­ed darts. (See pho­tos below)

So I trans­ferred the pat­terns to poster board and cre­at­ed my mom’s first mock-up!

Despite the few adjust­ments to the pat­tern at the sides and  neck­line, I was very pleased with the mock-up!

I could­n’t wait to get start­ed on the final cut and dress, but unfor­tu­nate­ly (and of course) there was a prob­lem and hur­dle to jump! I did­n’t have enough silk wool! I was about five inch­es too short when I laid out the pieces! Oh boy- I was not hap­py! There was no way I would be able to dri­ve up north for more fab­ric nor will­ing to pay for expe­dit­ed shipping!

I test­ed dif­fer­ent lay­outs and noth­ing worked.

I even thought about chang­ing the dress to pan­eled princess seamed dress in hopes to use the small­est about of fab­ric pos­si­ble. But before I was about to change the pat­tern, I dou­ble checked to see what I had in my fab­ric stash. Luck­i­ly, I found a bag of 2 expen­sive silks I bought in New York City last win­ter at Mood Fab­rics. I had them stashed away for a gown I planned to build. One of the silks is almost iden­ti­cal to the col­or of the silk wool! PHEW! (How­ev­er, I will have to change the plans for the gown I intend­ed to build.)

This is where I’m cur­rent­ly at with the moth­er of the bride dress. Though I am not pos­i­tive, but it is like­ly I will use the silk from New York City as a hor­i­zon­tal strip along the bot­tom of the skirt. I guess you will have to wait and see what I end up doing! 🙂

Next Post: Revised Maid of Hon­or Dress Sneak Peek & the sto­ry behind the sec­ond dress (actu­al­ly skirt and top)