Goddess of Sewing: May 2016

Back in December my cousin, Chance, married the lovely Cindy. I was called upon to make her wedding dress, which was super exciting. I love making wedding dresses. Well, I like the idea of making wedding dresses. With four kids running around it becomes a bit more difficult to do everything necessary to make a wedding dress. Because of that, we decided it would be best to order a dress ans alter it. Cindy found her perfect dress at JJ's House.

Cindy liked the mermaid silhouette

The button down back was another favorite feature.

As gorgeous as the dress is, there were some limitations. The sizing available in this style leaves a lot of girls out of luck. Thankfully the dress is encrusted with lace and I knew I'd be able to add in a gusset. The biggest issue with the gown, however, was how much of it was sheer. It's a gorgeous look, but Chance and Cindy planned to be married in the Payson temple and the dress needed to be more opaque for that. She also wanted 3/4 sleeves instead of long sleeves.

The dress straight out of the bag.

The first thing to do was make the dress fit. That required taking it in around the waist and adding a gusset in the hips. DOing this proved to be a bit more difficult than I had expected. I had assumed the lace medallions were only sewn to the mesh. They weren't. Those medallions were sewn on after the dress was constructed, so I had to pick out and peel them back before making the alterations to the dress. It was pretty involved. Picking out seams sewn with transparent thread is super fun. There needs to be a sarcasm font.

So. Much. Picking.

The sleeves and neckline were next. To avoid having the dress look like an obvious alteration, we decided to add more lace at the neck and back. I'm pleased with how it turned out.

Neck detail.

Along with building up the back with a satin lining, the dress needed a zipper that went all the way up to the top. In the interest of honesty, my mom took care of that for me. Sometimes things get to be too much and I was so grateful she was able to step in when my life got to be overwhelming. It gave me that extra rest I needed so I could come back to it fresh.

Finished back

By the time the dress was done I realized that it might have been less work to make the dress from scratch than it did to alter it. Oh well. She looked gorgeous and was happy with the dress. In the end, does anything else matter?