Analisa's Wedding Dress? RMSV Customer Highlight?

Here at RMSV, we'd like to show off what some of our customers have been working on with their machines! If you're interested in being featured in our blog, please go here -insert link to survey- to fill out a brief survey on what project you've done, the machine you used, and why you think we should choose you. We hope to highlight many of our customers and if you're chosen, you'll get a Rocky Mountain Sewing & Vacuum gift card!

For our first customer highlight, we've got Analisa who created her entire wedding dress on her Pfaff Ambition 1.0. Here is her story!

Analisa's Wedding Dress

After I graduated college, I was excited to have the time and money to enjoy my hobbies and to enjoy creativity in my free time. Without the pressure of homework and tests always around the corner I headed back to the local craft stores to see what looked like fun. I had a great time revisiting old hobbies, but inevitably the sewing patterns caught my eye. I had tried cross stitch and some basic quilt piecing as a child after seeing my mom sewing. At the time it was too tedious and did not hold my attention well enough, so I gave it up for more engaging activities. As an adult with an improved attention span and a much greater interest in potentially making my own clothes, I was excited to try it again. I bought a pattern for a pretty vintage reprint of an apron. I remembered how to thread a needle and do a basic running stitch. I read all the instructions, my mom gave me some pointers, and YouTube taught me the rest. The apron came out terribly since I had misunderstood how seam allowances worked. Each project since then has come out a little bit better than the last. I had been borrowing my mom’s sewing machine that she hadn’t used in a while. It worked great, but my joy in sewing had made her want to start a new project for herself. My parents gave me a beautiful sewing machine for Christmas that year.

The beautiful Pfaff ambition 1.0!

In the spring of 2021 my then boyfriend and I had been together for nearly 7 years. He was leaving soon for Navy officer candidate school, and we decided it was time to get married. We planned to get married soon after his graduation so that left me with about 3 months to get everything ready.  

I tried on some dresses at a boutique, but with the timeline I had we were looking at off the shelf dresses with any alterations being made on short notice. I found a couple of dresses I liked, and one even fit me really well without any alterations. I thought about it and for everything I liked about the dress there was always something I wanted to change. I thought the skirt fabric was too light and I was worried it would snag at the reception or wedding which was going to be outdoors. I was also worried I would be cold since we had chosen an October date. That could be fixed if I made an evening jacket to wear over the dress. The skirt could be made sturdier if I made a satin wrap skirt to cover the original one. A different dress I had tried on was almost exactly what I wanted. It was satin and had a beautiful silhouette. It even had pockets, but the proportions it was made for were different than my own and my short waist was causing the bodice boning to dig into my lower back. This was something the dress boutique said would not be able to be fixed in alterations and it was just going to be tight. I thought about my options for a week. The one dress was beautiful, but uncomfortable, and the other dress was comfortable, but my modifications I wanted for it would cover it completely. After thoughtful deliberation I decided to take what I liked from both dresses and make my own version. 

I got started on planning and drafting:

I would have loved to travel to New York city or somewhere with a large selection of bridal fabrics, but I was limited to the local fabric shops due to my deadline and budget. I decided I wanted a medium weight matte satin and I found one I really liked. However, it was in limited supply because the store was replacing the item number with a different satin fabric. I picked up all of it I could find and another lighter weight matte satin. My backup fabric looked closer in color at the store, but when I brought it home and looked at it in natural light it looked more different than my other fabric than I originally thought. I had about 8 yards of the fabric I liked better, so I was ready to start deciding how I wanted to use it.  

Skirt Mockup

I started my drafting by making a mockup of my skirt. I picked up a McCall’s pattern that had a skirt with a train. I had a couple of other bridal skirt patterns, but those did not include a train option. Also, the pattern that included a train was slightly fuller than the other skirts. I decided to give that one a shot and make a mockup of it.

I made the skirt using white muslin, and I attached a strip of fabric to the waist so it would not unravel, and I could tie it closed. I was able to take this on and off myself and the dressform for lots of fittings with all the different bodice options. I was happy with how it fit and looked. My next decision was how to approach the train. 

I did not really like how the train bunched up very quickly when I moved around. I wasn’t exactly sure if it was the fabric of the mockup causing this or if I was going to need to adjust the pattern and make the train longer. My Mom gave me her dress at the start of my dress project and said I could use it however I wanted. I had the option of using her train on my dress. I eventually decided against it because even though it was very beautiful, I did not want a bustled train at the reception, and it was not joined at the waist straight across. These would make extra work later that I wasn’t sure I wanted those challenges. 

I came up with an idea that I could make the dress without a train, then make a separate train that would attach with an elastic waist band. It would lay on top of my original dress and attach at the sides with buttons and loops. I could use buttons from my mom’s dress and the loops would be nearly invisible when I wasn’t wearing the train. This option was still limited by the amount of fabric I had and the time I had to make this separate piece. 

I ended up deciding that I did not have enough fabric or time to make the train. I wonderful lady who was cutting some fabric for me when I was shopping gave me the wonderful idea to purchase a cathedral length veil. I was not going to make my veil, and this would save me a lot of time trying to find a matching fabric or some other solution to having a train that I really did want. I found a lovely cape veil on Esty and my veil problem was solved. 

Evening Jacket

The next part of the dress I was very excited to get started was the evening jacket. My wedding was in October in Ohio so it might be very nice and warm during the day, but it could get chilly at night. I had to be prepared for all weather. Luckily, for this part of my dress I had a clear vision of what I wanted from the start. I had a pattern for a wrap dress with a bow and a separate pattern with some really cute 1930’s vintage sleeves. I knew it would look really cute together. 

The wrap front mockup mockup went well. The original pattern was for a satin liner covered with a sheer lacy fabric. The outer layer of the pattern had a soft pleat and it looked nice and soft, but I liked how the lining pattern piece was a little more form fitted. I also decided to take some fabric out of the top of the shoulder to help it to not bunch up. 

The sleeve mockup was straight forward. They had original 1930s directions so putting the sleeve cuffs onto the sleeve gathers was challenging. I had to make sure I had the correct sleeve attached the right way to the correct cuff. The directions had very minimal instruction on how to orient the sleeves to put them together. Once I got the hang of that they went together easily. 

Next step was to make the jacket from the nice satin I chose for my dress. I only own a few pattern weights, but I find that using butter knives works great. They lay nice and flat and they’re heavy enough. 

Once my pieces were cut and ready, I used a closed overlock stitch around all the edges to keep them from fraying. Whenever I start this process, it always feels like it going to take forever, because it slower than a regular straight stitch or a zigzag. However, it is only slightly slower and after the first few inches it flies by, and it's finished before I know it. 

I put it all together and decided that the sash looked better in a knot than a bow. 

The way I put in the zipper in the back was a little odd, but it worked well. Since the jacket was not attached to the dress in any way, I was going to need to be able to get it on and off easily. Closing it in the front would require lots of hooks and eyes and snaps to look secure as well and having to retie the knot each time I took it on and off. A zipper in the back was the better option for this case, but if the zipper was attached the normal way zipping from bottom to top. I would not be able to get it over my shoulders without messing up my hair. I decided on an upside-down zipper to easily get over my head and I could pull the zipper down by myself if I didn’t unzip it all the way. 

The last detail I added to the jacket was a decorative stitch to finish the hem on the sleeves. My pfaff machine had a beautiful variety of decorative stitches and it was a tough decision, but I chose a stitch that looked like fern leaves. I thought it was pretty and simple and wouldn’t clash with any jewelry or other wedding decorations. 

Bodice

Before I could start testing patterns for the bodice of the dress, I needed to have a more accurate dressform. I had a plastic adjustable dressform. It matched my measurements for a while, but since that time my measurements have changed in a way that the dressform cannot match. I bought a package of quilting batting and a yard of white knit to cover it. White was not a good call for this project, but it’ll look much better for future projects. I cut my quilting batting into strips and various shapes and layered it onto my dressform. I loosely tacked it all down and covered it with the knit. Its measurements are pretty close to mine. It’s not a perfect match but its pretty close for when I’m not trying it on myself. 

I wanted a sweetheart neckline with a low back in satin and lace draped over top. I started by testing some of the patterns I already owned that matched this style. The first one I tried wasn’t really fitted well to me. I was having a hard time deciding what size each panel should be based on the pattern instructions. The next pattern I tried was a 1950’s vintage blouse. It fit much better, but I did not like the horizontal darts. It looked to casual. It did fit better and gave me some ideas for better fit and draping. I tried draping on my dressform with darts and with panels. I chose the panels since I really liked how it looked finished. I had never draped before, so I had to do a lot of readjusting and trail and error. My dressform was not perfectly accurate so with my skill level I was getting it to fit as close as I could.

Once I had the fit mostly correct I started on how I wanted the top to look with the whole dress. I draped various laces and sashes I had to see what I liked. The white dressform was a hard to see the differences, but I used some extra pattern tissue and then eventually a dark tshirt. I was initially looking at vintage styles. I really liked the way 1930s dresses were draped. The pink lace was draped similarly to a photo of a gown made in the 1930s I was referencing. I was also looking at some off the shoulders style that was popular in a lot of 1950s gowns. I also tried some simple lace draped to be fitted closely and show off a decorative edge. My favorite option was lace applique attached to a lightweight mesh. 

I purchased a few different styles and played around different arrangements. I spent a long time deliberating over which one I liked the best. I didn’t make my decision and attach it until close to the last minute. 

I got my bodice adjusted to how I liked by interfacing some lightweight woven cotton and adding boning channels. Then I made a pattern out of the mockup. I cut my pieces out of my satin and sewed them together. 

I tried to make another structured layer to replicate the mockup, but I did not have success with it so I ended up using my mockup as a structure layer. I finished off the boning channels so they could not slide around. 

I chose to include an extra layer closest to my skin for comfort in case the boning channels would chafe against my skin. All together I had a satin layer on the outside, a boned and interfaced layer in the middle, and a cotton lining against my skin for comfort. There is not a photo of this, but at the last minute I added the foam cups I had on my dressform for extra support and to smooth out the silhouette. I tacked them in between the structure layer and the cotton lining. 

After a long time of pressing the seams as flat as possible, I under stitched the structure layer and lining. Now it was laying very flat and it was starting to look how I was imagining. 

The last structural detail I added to the bodice was an elastic waistband. I tacked this down in several places along the lining. The clasps are underneath the zipper so that it can be easily attached then hidden underneath the zipper. 

The next step was to drape the mesh so that it could be added to the bodice. Using my dressform I came up with a shape to cover the bodice. The mesh was very strechy and behaved  

Choosing a lace 

Attaching lace to mesh

Cutting skirt lining

Cutting skirt

Putting skirt together

Hemming

Crunch time mistakes and how everything came together

Final look