So…it’s finished! Honestly.
I’m going to wait to show you the final result until after
the big day, when hopefully there may be at least one or two photos of me not
pulling a photo face like Chandler from Friends. In the meantime, I’m going to
share with you a few of the finishing touches of my dress, and what I learnt
along the way.
My dress is pretty much a copy of a dress I tried on in
Candy Anthony, a specialist 50’s/60’s wedding dress designer. The one I fell in
love with had a polka dot bodice, with a scalloped lace trim. When I first
started looking at materials, I naively hoped to find a similar fabric, before
quickly realising for the edging to be curved and on both sides of the
shoulders, it must have been made specifically for those pattern pieces. So
taking the advice of someone in a Soho fabric store, I looked for a polka dot
tulle fabric, then a scalloped lace trim embroidered onto a similar tulle
fabric.
My polka dot (or flocked spot as it is apparently called)
tulle is from the Silk Society in Berwick Street and was an eyewatering £66 a
metre, luckily I got away with 0.75 of a metre and still have a little left
over for something else… The trim I searched
high and low for something I liked and that was a similar colour and eventually
found one in Fabricland for just £1 a metre. Which just shows you that the
expensive Soho shops aren’t the only options for formal wear!
The trim actually looked like this originally…. And I just
used the scalloped edge.
I realised in order for the edging to lay flat I was going
to have to ‘cut and paste’ the scallops, so they would follow the curve. I put
the dress on the mannequin and spent a great deal of time working out where to
cut the trim and join another scallop. I wasn’t sure of the correct way around,
but found it looked best with the trim on top and bodice overlay underneath.
I then sewed them on by hand within the thick embroidered edge
of the scallops using a sort of back stitch with the small stitches on the
front. To join two scalloped I used a whipstitch. After sewing along the entire
neckline I used nail scissors to cut away the excess tulle from the trim and
behind the trim, from the bodice overlay. When it came to the armholes I didn’t
need to cut and paste the scallops so just used one long strip and joined at
the underarm seam.
Considering I sortof made the technique up as I went along,
as I couldn’t find anything useful on the net or my sewing books, I’m very
happy with the result. I was worried it would be obvious, but after showing it
to both my Mum and sister, neither had any idea until I pointed out the exact
place where the scallops were joined.
Another finishing touch I’ve used for the first time is a
horsehair braid hem, also called a crinoline hem. It was suggested to me by my
seamstress friend, and gives the hem a lovely full look and structure to the
bottom. The crinoline I used was from Hemline which comes in a pack of 2” wide
by 3m long, and I used 2 packs to get all the way around my 29” skirt.
It’s incredibly
simple to do actually, just sew to the right side of your skirt using a ¼” seam
allowance, then fold to the inside, which encloses the raw edge. I used a
gathering stitch on the other edge and used it to help manipulate the braid to
stay flat on the other side, then catchstitch the edge to the main fabric by
hand. This worked for me, using a textured fabric like dupioni silk, but with a
lighter, smooth fabric it might be better to underline first so the stitches don’t
show though.
Here are a couple of articles I found incredibly helpful and
have pictures too!
I love the look this hem technique provides, and it was surprisingly
easy, so I will definitely be using it on the bridesmaids dresses, and any
circle skirts I do in the future!
Emily Kate.