Bridesmaid's and flowergirl's dress

Yesterday I posted about a wedding dress I made. I also made one of the bridesmaid's dresses, for my daughter, and a flowergirl's dress for her daughter. The bride had selected coral as a colour for her wedding, and that was used for the dresses.

The bridesmaids dresses are not at all what British or American ones would be! The bridesmaids wanted a print dress that would be wearable afterwards. They could not have had the same cut because the other bridesmaid was on her last month of pregnancy. She made her own dress. She also made a flowergirl's dress for her 2½-year-old daughter. But on the day the little grl wouldn't wear it because she said it was scratcy at the shoulders! Instead, she wore an ordinary cotton summer dress for the wedding.

Flowergirl's dress

We decided to make dresses of two different fabrics. The top one is transparent sheer fabric. The skirt part is a fairy dress style, with two squares set on top of each other.

Below a phone photo I sent to the other bridesmaid to show how the pieces of the bottom part of the dress were arranged.

The skirt part consists of a square of each fabric, with a round hole in the middle. The hole is 1/3 larger than the girl's measurement around the chest.

Excitement in throwing rose petals :)

Bridesmaid's dresses

The bridesmaid's dress is made of fabric that feels like a scarf. My daughter chose the shape to be copied from her sister's old evening dress.

The dress is bare back.

 

I loved the wedding because the bride and groom had managed to make everything show their own personalities!

Wedding!

Years ago, when I used to be a fulltime craftsperson in Belfast, sewing wedding dresses was one of my favourite kinds of work. After a long break from it I was asked to make a dress for a daughter's friend.  She was very specific in what she wanted and couldn't find it ready-made: 50's style, knee length with accents in coral colour.

The wedding was on a hot weekend on a small island outside Turku.

The dress is thick ivory satin. The bodice is partly covered by lace. The bride bought it in Stockholm. There is 10 metres of tulle netting under the skirt.

 

 

I'm used to doing most of my sewing by making big alterations to patterns or completely without patterns, just drawing the shape directly on the material. There was a pattern for the bodice but after alterations it ended up quite different. I drew the full circle skirt on the fabric with a pen, using a builder's measure. I don't sew much now so my tools aren't up to date!

There is boning at the back of the bodice. The plastic boning wasn't of great quality because bits started sticking at the bride just before the first dance! We had to get the ends cut off in a rush. Need to find out where to get boning that stays the way it should be!

A detail of the belt: 

 The bride's lovely shoes came from an American online store:

It was a great day, apart from being too hot!

Wedding place cards

All summer I have been too busy to post but hope to get back to it now. My daughter's wedding was a couple of weeks ago. That kept me busy. One of the things I made were the place cards. They were tied to the glasses.