Who is getting married this time?
I have only made one other wedding dress in my life and I worked hard to keep it that way! Even with five daughters.
Up until now.
I’m not exactly sure what happened, but I am now in charge of sewing the wedding garments for the last daughter to get married – Natalie. And she has graciously said that I can blog about it. Especially when I said it would help with stress relief.
Backpacking or choosing fabric?
The timeline was already tight, but then I found out she had a backpacking trip planned. When I expressed how this could complicate choosing fabric and making important initial decisions, she pulled together a trip to the fabric store the following day.
The participants were me, her, and her younger sister (the one who had managed to sweetly draft me into this project). Keep in mind that this younger sister is about 8 months pregnant and due about 2 weeks before the wedding. But true to her word, she has already spent two full days helping me.
To Natalie’s credit, she promised to cancel the backpacking trip if we couldn’t find fabric and come up with a plan that she was rock solid happy about.
Thinking outside the original wedding dress box
One more reason to be nervous about this very special dress is that Natalie is a graphic artist and photographer. She is also very stylish. She knows color and form and all that.
I remind myself that it’s not like I haven’t sewn things for her before – things she has been very happy with. Then, in the store, she also pointed out that she was wearing a blouse that I made for myself many moons ago. Like 240 moons ago (by my calculations, that is roughly 20 years ago). And she wears it regularly and gets compliments on it.
Ironically, it is a deep, cheerful red. This came in handy when she was struggling with what she thought she wanted for a wedding fabric.
After about 90 minutes of looking at all kinds of combinations of what she had in her mind, but her not feeling settled about any of it, I asked if she was willing to just walk through the aisles of the fabric store and picture her wedding outfit in whatever caught her eye.
Unexpected discoveries
As we walked the aisles, she put several bolts of fabric in the cart to contemplate. This was a departure from the solid cream or white color schemes.
And then she saw it. A bolt of large red rosed embroidered on a lace like netting.
It had been right there among the wedding laces, but she hadn’t taken notice because of the other plan. However, it sparked her to admit that she had been already thinking of embroidering red roses on a white dress.
I do have limits
She had mentioned doing the embroidery earlier in the evening, but no other details. I had nixed that idea. She has not done embroidery and I have.
In fact, I just spent several months embroidering a few (beautiful) daisies on a custom window shade for our new kitchen. She had conceded that my perspective on that being too much for the schedule was reasonable. Especially with her sister’s new baby appearing at any moment!
Do you want to see the fabric and plan?
The video below shows the wedding outfit fabric and patterns. It also explains that I have chosen this project to kick off my new Daily Improvisations membership: Sewing Room Insider.
If you join, you will see the raw footage (edited for enjoyable and time-efficient viewing – but still raw!) of our wedding project. If we make any gross mistakes, you will be the first to know. If you see us heading down a path of destruction, you can yell at me!
I have already assigned a few of my other sewing videos to the DI Sewing Room Insider membership, such as the how-to video on sewing polar fleece socks.
And this will be where I have the instructional videos for sewing my hip bag pattern and showing how we are making our fabulous window shades (7 done, 23 to go…)
The truth about my sewing room
Sewing Room Insiders will see the messy truth about an active sewing room. And one that uses a combination of various storage systems that became available and affordable over the years.
I hope you will join me.
