My wedding dress - Part 1
Written by Elisabeth on March 12, 2009 – 23:25 -I really, really wish I knew how to sew. Well - I do know how to operate my sewing machine (at the bare minimum), I can more or less follow a simple pattern and friends and family tend to be terribly impressed with what I present them; either just to look at and admire or to keep and admire.
But for some reason it never quite struck me that maybe they are so impressed because they really don’t have any faith in my sewing skills? Maybe I’m actually way to overconfident in this area?
The overconfidence thought has struck me now, and with such force.
I am getting married in just over a month. I am flying to Japan in exactly 18 days for a vacation / honeymoon / wedding. For that wedding I have planned for months and months to wear a bottle green 1950s dress with black butterflies appliqued to the fabric. I did have some initial doubts about making the dress myself, but when I discovered that a competent dress maker will charge somewhere between 600 and 1000 dollars my cheapness got the better of me and I decided that I would make the dress myself.
I have harboured all kinds of romantic notions about floating around in a pretty homemade dress, feeling like the top of the world and getting compliments from everyone. I started out the quest for this fantasy fulfillment by ordering a vintage 1950s pattern. I proceeded by (foolishly) thinking “how hard can it be to make a simple cotton dress” and bought fabric and thread and everything pretty.
After a while I started getting worried. I had totally neglected to take into account that I am quite busty so I would need some serious tailoring in that general area. I had also not put any thought towards the fact that I’m really bad at sewing holes for arms - something that a dress should have after all.
So.
18 days till I leave for Japan. What do I have? I have a half sown skirt, some sort of top, some scruffy looking arm holes attached to that top, brand new shoes, an underskirt ordered off eBay and a plan B to drop the dress, sew the skirt part into a, well, skirt, stick on the pretty butterflies - and then pair it off with a lovely top and a broad belt.
Plan A is still not completely lost though. I have called upon my mother to visit me next week to see if she can salvage the dress. If she can, she has to sew it all in one evening while I do things like stand stupidly around, cook dinner and act as a mannequin.
Wish me luck -
Tags: dress, sewing, wedding
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