Karlene's Workshop

My Wedding Dress

Posted on 05 May 2009

The first Wedding dress I completed was for myself,  from my own design, ie I made the pattern as well 🙂

It looks nothing like the frou-frou meringue that I always dreamed of wearing as a girl, as the fashion at the time (2001) was for a more elegant streamline silhouette.  And I wanted something simple to sew to avoid stress!

The top layer is an empire line style with ribbon loops on the bodice for the lace up closure, and a skirt that gets longer at the back to form a train.  Cut from some beautiful lace that I fell in love with, it has a rose style floral pattern and a deep border on the bottom edge that I used for the hem and the bodice. I also had to hand stitch a piece of  the smaller top edge border onto the cuffs, because if I had cut the sleeves with the cuff along the top edge of the fabric, the rose pattern on the sleeve would have been upside down.

The underneath layer  is a simple slip dress style in delustured satin with elastic straps (eww, what was I thinking?) trimmed at the hem with lace.

The photo doesn’t really do justice to this dress, that lace is exquisite. However if I had the chance to do this over again, I would make the satin under dress a lot more structured and form fitting.