Friday, November 19, 2010

My personal couture seamstress

Yes, I have a personal Couture seamstress to sew me party dresses that fit perfectly! She is also known as my awesome mom, Connie Akers. My mom is just too good to me. When she moves away to the Hill Country I'll be going through withdrawals. I have mentioned before that I do love to sew, but I can't make fitted things for myself. Perhaps if I had a dress form I could, but mom just makes it look so easy. She knows where to take things up to make them fit just right.

My bridesmaid dress for Robin and Chases' wedding is one of those custom fit items. We used Vogue 8494 (purchased for $3.99 at a Joann sale, of course!) and made a wearable muslin. I did do the sewing on the muslin version, with mom helping me to fit it perfectly. We didn't take the muslin apart, but transferred the changes to the pattern pieces directly from the dress. That part was a bit tricky, but worked out in the end. In my opinion, this pattern is too complex for a casual sundress, but does fit like a glove and is quite flattering. On this version I had cut a larger skirt to accommodate my curves and we put some pleats in to easily fit it to the bodice.

Here is my muslin in a striped Seersucker.
It looks much better now that it is ironed and hemmed.
vogue 8494 in striped seersucker

The dress for the wedding needed to be Navy and I found some great fabrics at Golden D'or in Dallas. They have an annual summer sale and I got my fabrics during that. I got a Linen Weave Silk for the main fabric, Silk Dupioni for the contrast bands and Silk Organza for the pleated ruffle (my addition to the pattern).

I was so nervous to cut into the fabrics because they were so nice.

As I mentioned before, my seamstress (mom) did the sewing on this one. I was just too worried about messing something up and the dress had to be perfect for the wedding!

Here is the completed dress. I love the weight of the Linen Weave Silk, I think it would be considered a suiting weight. It really has a nice structure to it without being uncomfortable, and fits so well. We did view B with the contrast bands and added the organza pleated ruffle to the bottom. For the ruffle we doubled the organza and used a pleating board to make the pleats. We ironed it really well, took it out of the pleating board and stitched the pleats down to keep them in place.

Navy bridesmaid dress

Ruffle detail
Navy bridesmaid dress detail

Dad and I in front of the paper moon at the wedding.
This is a good view of how the dress fit me.
dad and I at Robin and Chases wedding

3 comments:

Connie Akers said...

I'm glad I could do it for you and they worked out well. Can't wait to see pictures of the new one. xoxo, Mom

littlecherryhill said...

oh your dress turned out gorgeous!!!

Gretchen Schermerhorn said...

You look so pretty!