Bridal: Deep-V Wedding Dress part 4
My last post was over a month ago, where did the time go? I've been deep into wedding dress construction in every spare minute since February. I keep thinking I should sit down and write a blog post about finally finishing my custom skinny jeans but I haven't taken photos of the final product yet. I've also been hesitant to post about the wedding dress as it gets more and more dress-like because I don't want to ruin the surprise for my bride. So, for today, I'm just going to share a little bit about the process and the insides of the dress.
The bodice outer layer is underlined with white cotton for extra body and to give a layer to attach inner structures to. I basted the layers together, then thread traced all the seam lines before basting the bodice pieces together and finally machine stitching them. Baste, thread trace, baste, machine, remove all the basting and tracing, repeat. Seam allowances were trimmed with pinking shears to help with raveling, pressed open on a ham, and then stitched down to the cotton underlining.
The skirts were so large that I had to mop my kitchen floor a few times so I could lay everything out flat enough to cut. The center back seam will be closed with faux pearl buttons and the inside edges will be finished with lace trim which gives a slight vintage feel that I love. Oh man, to thread trace the skirt seams took miles and miles of hand stitching, and I am NOT looking forward to hemming two layers of full circle plus a train.
My bride didn't want boning in the dress, she wanted it to feel soft, and move easily. This presented a bit of a challenge because the dress is essentially backless. When I originally titled this dress the "Deep-V" wedding dress it wasn't in reference to the front. The bodice only rises 1 inch from the waistline in the back of the dress and there is nothing to support. Instead of boning, I chose to stitch two layers of horsehair braid into the bodice seams to give them more body and prevent collapsing and wrinkling. At the base of the braids to prevent scratching, I stitched little bits of satin ribbon that I have left over from writing thank you cards for my own wedding 13 years ago. Maybe that can be something old? I also stitched horsehair along the edge of the open back and in the point of the v-neck just to keep things nice and crisp.
I still have many miles to go, but I can finally see the path to the end. The next post on this project most likely won't be until June, after the wedding. You can read about the entire process so far here.