WEEK 2: My Sister’s Silk and Lace Wedding Dress Progress

It’s crunch time! 

A lit­tle over 3 weeks until the wed­ding and  I am swamped with work (both legal and sewing)! But, I hope to accom­plish all the projects: wed­ding dress, brides­maid dress, moth­er of the bride dress, and father of the bride out­fit (jack­et and/or pants).

Because I don’t have much time to write, I will basi­cal­ly share the wed­ding dress­mak­ing sto­ry through pic­tures (with a few tips and com­ments along the way). Sorry 🙁

Week 2:  Building the 100% silk  underlay skirt
Week 2: Build­ing the 100% silk under­lay skirt

This week:

(1) Adjust­ed the pat­tern at the hips

(2) Preshrunk silk

(3) Cut the 100% silk taffeta/charmeuse (I’m not entire­ly sure what you would call the silk we bought for the skirt underlay)

(4) Built the silk skirt

Unfor­tu­nate­ly my dritz wash­able mark­ing pen dried out on me, so I used a light blue chalk to trace my pat­tern onto the silk.

TIP: I DON’T cut on folds or through 2 lay­ers when I cut silk. Instead I pin down the pat­tern or use heavy weights/bricks to keep the silk from mov­ing. Luck­i­ly this silk was thick­er and not too slip­pery! How­ev­er the silk charmeuse (BUTTERY fab­ric) we bought for the top of the dress will be extreme­ly slip­pery, so these tricks will be espe­cial­ly help­ful for that cut!

Laying out silk and pattern to cut
Lay­ing out silk and pat­tern to cut

After cut­ting all the skirt pieces (pan­els, godet, and waist­band pieces), I inter­faced and serged the edges of all the pieces.

We decid­ed not to inter­face and line the entire skirt due to: lack of time, lim­it­ed mon­ey, silk being cov­ered by lace and like­ly hot tem­per­a­tures in the chapel. How­ev­er,  I decid­ed to inter­face the edges of the godet and pan­els. (Inter­fac­ing would add more strength & sta­bil­i­ty to the seams.) Also, I ful­ly inter­faced and lined the waist­band pieces.

Interfacing the silk wedding dress waistband

If I could go back, I’d def­i­nite­ly do things dif­fer­ent­ly (when inter­fac­ing the edges). Some seams are a bit puck­ered (this could change after I steam the dress). Per­haps I could’ve used a dif­fer­ent inter­fac­ing, skipped inter­fac­ing, inter­faced the entire skirt, or used very nar­row inter­fac­ing strips.

Well, it’s not worth stress­ing over because the silk will be cov­ered in lace! 🙂

I fully interfaced all the waistband pieces. (And the waistband will be lined.)
I ful­ly inter­faced all the waist­band pieces. (And the waist­band will be lined.)

Next, I stitched all the pieces togeth­er & insert­ed the godet (train-like piece in the back).

Last­ly, I bast­ed and stitched in the back invis­i­ble zipper.

Here’s what we have so far!

(My sis­ter is out of town so I had to fit the skirt piece…she is about 2″ taller than me and thin­ner, so the skirt is a bit tight and long in the pho­tos here.)

Silk and Lace Wedding Dress Anagrassia
Silk and Lace Wedding Dress Anagrassia
The lace skirt is not yet steamed.
Silk and Lace Wedding Dress Anagrassia
Silk and Lace Wedding Dress Anagrassia

Next Step:

Fin­ish­ing the silk hem & sewing the lace overlay.

The process will be sim­i­lar to the silk skirt, but there won’t be any inter­fac­ing to fuse and the lace will have to be hand stitched to the skirt at the zipper.

After attach­ing the lace over­lay, I’ll be able to fin­ish lin­ing the waistband.

2 thoughts on “WEEK 2: My Sister’s Silk and Lace Wedding Dress Progress

  1. susan

    that is awe­some. fit­ting the dress may be the most time con­sum­ing part but well worth it. can’t wait to see the lace!

    Reply

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