The Dress

Before

















Ok, so this one was a long time in coming! I had wanted to post the before pic as soon as we got the dress, then post updates on the makeover. But, well, you know how it goes. I'm not that good on following through on things.

Well, we got the dress at a thrift store soon after Bryan and Rachel were engaged and took the before pic. You can see that Augie the dog and Hope (Rachel's pet monkey) had to get in on the action. It's a two piece dress, a bustier-type bodice and ball gown skirt.

First I had to take in the bodice, Rachel being like a size 2 and all, then covered it in a champagne colored satin. Over that I put the $70/yard smokey green lace and ruched it up a bit. It nearly broke my heart to have to cut the stuff it was so beautiful! I had a difficult time adding the corset back to it. I couldn't find anything at JoAnn's to use for the loops and didn't know how to make them. So I used this black leather-like strip with grommet holes and sewed that onto the inside of each side of the opening, then threaded the ribbon through. It wasn't meant to be functional as in closing the back of the bodice tightly, hooks and snaps did that job, but it was just for decoration to give it the "corset" look. Then I added the off-the-shoulder sleeves.









For the skirt I again had to take in the waist several inches. Then I made 4 large panels out of the same champagne satin that was used on the bodice, making them several inches longer than the skirt so we could bunch it up all over. I laid these over the origional white skirt, and attached them to a waistband that hooked onto the waist of the white skirt. We bunched up the panels and tacked them into place.









Then I took 2 panels of the same beautiful lace that we had used for the bodice and put a panel on the front of the dress peeking out of the satin, and on the train in the back.









I think the whole thing turned out pretty well. The leather grommet strip in the back pulled off a bit and had to be held on with safety pins because someone pulled on it too tight. So I need to figure out a better way to do corset backs in the future. Rachel was a patient angel during the fittings, I couldn't have asked for a more good-natured bride! She turned out absolutely stunning at the wedding and actually could have pulled off the whole thing wearing a paper sack for as pretty as she was. All in all it was a good experience and I'm looking forward to making over some more wedding dresses! (Most of these pics I stole from Ginger, thank you!)

After










(Yes, that handsome pastor is my Beloved!)