My First Wedding Dress!

Last winter, I spent a great deal of time in every single bridal store in town to help my friend find her special dress. But I must say I wasn't unhappy about that. It gave me the opportunity to spy on thousands of dresses, looking for inspirations, finishing, techniques, materials...

If you're in fashion design, you know exactly what I mean.

Anyway, I loved it and wanted to try myself to sew a wedding dress but had no reason to do so. And seriously, with the amount of work & fabric involve to make such a dress, it is pointless to make one "just for fun".

When, in the Spring semester, the teachers started encouraging us to enter a fashion design competition in Dallas, I had what I was hoping for: a good excuse to spend time and money on this kind of project! I love school!

After sketching about 10 dresses, I choose to make a simple yet elegant one which would make me work on bustiers.

Here is my dress, walking on the Dallas Career Day runway:

Isn't it super pretty? Well, I know the model is not for nothing in that, but still!
I didn't win anything at the contest, but it did not matters. My design was part of the opening looks. It was so amazing to see my dress coming out on such a professional show.
I loved loved loved it.
I loved it so much that I'm now looking for as many runway as I can get for all my designs. And I'm definitly going back next year, even if I don't enter anything in the contest. I just loved this show!


But I'm here to talk about my dress, so here are some pictures who might interest the sewer among you:

From top to bottom & left to right, you can see:

- The skirt pattern in progress

- a try out of the draped part, just for fun, with the fabrics I had on hand, on top of the just sewn bustier

- The dress, waiting to be lined

- A close-up of the finished bustier with the draped satin on top.

And because a bride as to be the prettiest under every angle, here are different views of the dress:

Here is the same dress but at the end of the year fashion show at school.
I told you I'm now showing my garment as much as possible!

For this show, I made the head-piece during my millinery class:

I must confess that is the dress is exactly my style, I think the hat is a bit too much. Yes, I like simple things!

One last thing: I have something for see thru garments and thought for a while not lining the skirt but instead just make a matching satin short. Well, I didn't dare and just sticked with a more traditional gown. But don't you think it would have been cute?