A Special Dress for a Special Day

As promised, here is my post on The Dress that was worn to my Anniversary Party last week.

When my husband and I got married “on the fly” last year, my biggest regret was that I didn’t have time to make my dress. I had always dreamed of sewing my wedding dress, just like my mom had, but we since we put the wedding together in about two weeks and I wasn’t sewing much back then, there was no way it could happen in time. However, I had several months to plan our anniversary party, so I got a second chance!

The fabric I used was a gorgeous buttercream silk charmeuse from my mom’s stash. I had had my eye on that fabric for over a decade – it had been used to create a costume for one of the Shakespeare productions I took part in way back before high school, and I had always dreamed of making something elegant out of it for myself. Luckily, there were still several yards of the fabric left – plenty for a tea-length gown!

The pattern I chose was, of course, By Hand London’s Flora dress. I had originally thought of doing a floor-length Anna dress with the knee-high split, but I was having trouble visualizing it in the fabric. But as soon as I made my first Flora, I knew this was it!

After much research, I finally found the courage to prewash and cut my silk. I cut my silk through a sandwich of tissue paper, using this great tutorial from Grainline as a guide. In retrospect, a heavier paper would’ve been better, but all I had on hand was my pattern tracing tissue. Next time, I will definitely invest in some craft paper. Nonetheless, I’m so glad I took that step – the silk didn’t shift around nearly as much, and I also didn’t have to worry about pins putting runs in my beautiful fabric!

The lace on the bodice is a lovely cotton piece from Casual Elegance Fabrics. It was an amazing deal – $10/yard, and I only needed one! In fact, I paid more for my lining fabric (a dreamy cotton voile from Grey’s ) than I did for the dress fabric! As a side note, this dress is one example of when sewing is cheaper than RTW – the dress cost me about $40 for all the materials. Compare that with the thousands of dollars people typically spend on their wedding dress – not bad!

The construction was fairly time-consuming – since I was underlining the lace with the silk charmeuse, I had to hand-baste all the bodice pieces together. I also discovered that I had to hand-baste the darts, since I was having trouble catching the lace in the tip of the dart.

There’s a kind of zen to taking the time and care for these extra steps, and I actually really enjoyed the process. I knew I was creating an heirloom, so I didn’t mind the extra effort. In addition to the hand-basting, I used French seams for the skirt seams and seam tape to bind all other exposed seams and sew the hem.

(My “something blue” was the seam binding 🙂 )

Here she is!

I’m so thrilled with how it turned out – this was exactly the wedding dress I’d always wanted! Not too much fuss, but elegant and very much my style.