Monday, April 14, 2014

THE Project - Part 3 - The Dress

After spending some time to read about the organization of a such event, and trying to find the perfect place, I finally needed to move toward the most important part of the whole wedding - The Dress! I attempted to this project as I usually do - identify the problem, check for solutions, choose one solution and at least one back up variant, and go for the solution with full speed. So far so good!

When I first announced the idea my mother was about to faint. Seriously, Mom?! I've been sewing for most of my life, both as a hobby and profession and she'd pretty familiar with that. I guess her reaction was just common for all mothers:) Anyway, I have to admit that even I was thinking at first that I might get a beautiful ready-made dress. This continued for about a week. During that week I saw as many bridal websites as I could and watched as many Say Yes to the Dress episodes as I could. By the end of this week I was sure I am going to sew my dress. Nothing else out there was suitable - either in color, fabric, or price. Do I really need to spend more than a month's salary for a one-evening dress? Especially when I hate the material or it is totally-not-me when I put the dress on. I think no. Thus, it was the second decision with which I was pretty certain and didn't think twice about it. Still, most of my friends were surprised to hear it. Yes, I don't have many sewing friends around here. Sewing is so-out-of-date that it is becoming modern again:) The new black, you know. And I love that. I see many hand-made dresses coming up in the future.

Then I ran a quick search on internet to see who did the same thing and sewed her own dress. I was pleasantly surprised by a few blogs. I was lucky to have found Melanie and her wonderful blog http://poppykettle.com/. She has written a very useful post about whether to sew or not her own wedding dress. She points out some other places for inspiration. I have checked them all and found a very common trait. Then I rechecked the posts and the about pages of the bloggers and guess what - most of the blogs I really liked were written by engineers! They (myself included) seem to do one and the same thing - identify the problem, look for solutions, choose a solution and go for it! I admit that I enjoy this process now, but it took me several years to start doing it.

Then the process of finding a pattern started. In relation to this, I found Veanna's blog SoSewLovely very useful. I love the both dresses she made - one for the wedding and one for the reception. Also, she explained her sewing process very well and gave lots of sewing tips. If you are in place where you start considering that making your own dress might be not that hard, you will like the tips she offers. 

Now on the patterns. Until a couple of years ago, I had been a faithful fan to Burda magazine for years. Recently, I realised that I'd been buying the magazine (mostly) every single month since 1993. Then, several years back I found a Spanish magazine, Patrones, which I absolutely loved! Burda had became too boring and started repeated their patterns over and over again while Patrones offered great new ideas. Too bad I cannot find an e-version of it to share. Also, after years of sewing, I was surprised to see that the Spanish fit was more suitable for my body type than the German one. Thus, I became a faithful fan of Patrones. However, at this very moment, I have piles of magazines and nothing that I really like so I could make my own wedding dress. I started my online search. Fortunately, Vogue Patterns have great patterns and ideas. I chose several, vintage and modern fit, designs. Still, I was not completely satisfied and could not find the real-me-dress. However, the patterns gave me a good starting point and are a great tool to use. 



Then it took a couple of days to decide but finally I knew what I’d like to get – I will make a compilation between the upper two patterns and will make the orange one too. Aren't they lovely?! 

Now off to do some mock-ups.




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