Custom Wedding Dress: Beaded Leaf Gown

This past summer I was contacted about making a custom-fitted wedding gown for a client in Australia.  She’d been following my blog for a while and remembered the Beaded Leaf Gown that I made way back in the 9th grade.  [If you follow the link  - you know that moment when you look back on an old diary page and think, "I can't believe I wrote like that!"?  Well I just had that moment.  Please don't judge my middle school writing style too harshly.  Haha I was only 14-years-old at the time.] 

She asked if I could remake the Beaded Leaf Gown into a wedding dress her size.  I'd already wanted to remake this dress, because there were a lot of kinks in the construction of the first design.   This time I was able to sew it without any of the technical problems that I ran into when I first made it.  Therefore, when she asked me to make it for her wedding dress I was excited with the idea of recreating it! 

 

As I can remember, my inspiration was layered leaves.  The bodice is in the shape of a maple leaf, as well as the leaves around the skirt waistline.  The skirt leaves are inspired by elongated leaves that are each cut separately and then sewn into the waistline of the skirt overlay.  There is beading along all of the skirt leaves and two of the waistline side leaves.  This is to give a subtle emphasis to the leaf shape. 

The invisible zipper was sewn into the back.  Because I had panels of leaves overlapping each other along the waistline, I added hooks and eyes in the back of the panel so they could overlap the zipper and flow like the rest of the dress.

All of the appliqué on the front bodice was hand sewn on top of tulle into the pattern of a maple leaf.  Each piece of appliqué is about 2 inches in diameter.  Once it was hand sewn I lined up the tulle darts with the bodice darts, and hand sewed the tulle down into the bodice fabric, because doing so gives a better fit without warping or sagging.   [This was an issue that I had with my first dress - I sewed the appliqué onto tulle without sewing darts first. ]

The applique in this gown is actually cut up pieces from this 1980s dress that I got at Goodwill on 50%off day way back in middle school.  I was really happy when I found a photo of the same dress online just to see the before and after!   

Overall, the construction of this dress took about 150 hours to make.  What I find funny is that if you look back at my post from 2010, I've really learned to enjoy hand sewing and fine detail work since then.  It's something that I look forward to in designing now.  It’s funny to look back on that post; considering the title is, "Never want to hand sew again!!"  Ha

 The gown was packed and shipped to Australia in the beginning of January.  This was my first wedding gown that I made for someone, and I feel like I learned so much about the process! 

DIY Tutorial: Multi-Colored Beaded Necklace

Hello everyone, I hope the start of your New Year has been everything that you've hoped so far! Today I'm posting the tutorial on how to make the Multi-Colored Beaded Necklace that I made in my previous post.  Here are the steps on how to make one yourself!

Step 1. 

Collect/find your items. This is the most fun part in my opinion.  If you've ever been a crafter you know what I mean when I say the notorious, "random bobble box."  It's that box (or boxes) where you keep all your random, pretty, things that you've found over the years and think you might use one day.  Well now's your time to go through it!  Take out whatever looks visually interesting to you.  

If you don't have a random bobble box - no worries!  Wal-Mart has an incredible $1 bead bin that has all sort of things you can use.  You can also take apart old costume jewelry, or go to the clearance jewelry section and buy a cheap necklace to deconstruct and use for parts.  For this necklace I used a plethora of random beads, old necklaces I took apart, and a few of those glass stones that are put in outside gardens.  You can use anything! 

Step 2. 

Now's your time to start laying out your pattern on a piece of felt and choose where you want your items to go.  There's no right or wrong way to do this, just play around with what looks pleasing to you.  

 Step 3:  

Once you have a basic, solid idea of what you want your necklace to look like, outline the shape with a chalk pencil.  

Step 4.  

Next start gluing down your objects using a strong fabric glue. 

 Step 5.  

Once your bead are glued down into place you can cut out your design (leave a few extra centimeters around all the edges).  Now if you'd like, you can outline your design with a row of fun colored seedbeds for a finished look. You can make as many rows as you want (I did two).

Tip:  Instead of sewing each bead one by one, I put a bunch of them onto the thread so there's already a long strand of beads.  Then I sewed that string of beads onto the edges.  This makes the process go much faster and it looks more polished than sewing each bead one by one. 

Step 6,  

Now carefully cut off the extra felt.

Step 7.

The very last thing to do is attach a ribbon or chain to the backside of the necklace.  If you already have a necklace that you took apart and it has a chain with a clasp already attached that makes it even easier for you!  I decided to use ribbon so I'll be sewing that onto the back.  If your ribbon is the kind that frays take a lighter or clear finger nail polish and go over the cut edges so it won't unravel.  

Tada!  It took some time, but you now have your very own handmade necklace!  You can makes these in variations of sizes and styles.  I think it's fun to make the design look random, but you can make it more symmetrical and organized if you like.  It's whatever comes out of your imagination now!  If you make a necklace be sure to send me the link - I'd love to see your own creation!  

Multi-Colored Beaded Necklace

 In the 3rd grade I was really into jewelry-making and went through an entire season where that's all I did.  I watched Beads Bobbles and Jewels on PBS religiously every Tuesday afternoon and stalked their website for hours, bookmarking every project that I thought looked cool (which was every single one).   Of course, once I found knitting, my obsession moved to a hobby that I still did from time to time.  Looking back jewelry-making ultimately started me on my path with textiles and fashion.  This past week I went back into a small jewelry-making phase.  I made the necklace that I'm wearing out of felt, beads that I had laying around, and ribbon.

My inspiration for this necklace was a painter's pallet.  I always love the random look of the mismatched colors.  Pallet's always end up looking cohesive to me, even though all the colors are very different and no thought is put into where each color will go.  I tend to over think most of my projects (am I the only one who does that?) so I wanted to make a project where I forced myself to not over think the design process.  So when I was planning the pattern of the necklace, I just laid down whatever color that I first picked up.  It was so much fun and a nice break from thinking too hard!  

Outfit:  

Blouse and Necklace - Esther from the Sticks 

Flare Jeans - Forever 21

 Hat - Thrifted

All photos taken by myself

 I forgot how much I've missed working with jewelry, and I'm hoping to make a few more of these necklaces in different styles and colors. 

I'll be posting a tutorial on how to make this necklace next week!

First Quarter at SCAD

Hello lovelies!  I've now been home on break for a little over 2 weeks, and it's been absolute bliss to be sewing again!  Most of my focus has been going into the wedding dress that I'm in the middle of working on.  Until I have other projects to show, I thought that I'd show with you some of my artwork from my first quarter at SCAD.

Design projects: 

 This quarter I had Drawing 1, Design 1, and Survey of Western Art 1.  Next quarter I'll be taking
 Drawing 2, Color Theory, and an English elective that focuses on the literature of Jack London.  I feel more optimistic about next quarter, because I did most of my initial adjusting these past couple of months.

Also, I wanted to say thank you to all the outpouring of love that I received after I shared about my homesickness and grief a couple posts back.  I really appreciate all the kind words, and I've been doing so much better now that I've been home for a couple of weeks.  I've been sewing and catching up on rest and just spending time with my family.

Until my next post, here's a couple update photos on how the wedding dress is coming along.  I'm working on hand sewing the bead design onto tulle that will be attached to front of the bodice.

Birthday in the Sticks

Today is my 19th birthday and it feels so good to be spending it back home in Indiana.  I've been home for almost two weeks now and I've definitely noticed a difference in temperature.  I've been absolutely freezing!  There's a huge change from Savannah's winter temperature and Indiana's winter temperature.  I thought that I'd be taking more photos, but I've been too cold to even venture on an outside photo shoot until today. 

Even though I haven't been photographing much, I've made up for it in my time spent sewing!  This past fall I was commissioned to make a custom wedding dress so my main creative focus while I'm home is on this dress.  Here's a little preview of the hand beading that I just finished today.  I'll keep you updated as I work along!   

Until my next post I'll leave you today with the song that always gets stuck in my head for my birthday every year. 

Back in the Day

I just finished my first quarter at SCAD!  Finals ended this past Thursday and it feels so good to be on break.  I have 6 weeks before the next quarter starts and in a week from today I'll be back home in Indiana.  Since my last final I've been catching up on all of the fashion websites, and magazines that I didn't have time for in the past couple of months.  Which of course brings me to mention this month's Vogue with Jessica Chastain's feature, photographed by one of my favorites - Annie Leibovitz.  What a visually inspiring photo spread.  Not to go overboard, but also Tim Walker's editorial as well (I can't tell if this was just a really good issue, or it's been too long since I've opened a fashion magazine so everything is hitting me as flawless).       

All photos taken by myself

      Outfit - Hat and pants: Red Clover Boutique,  Blazer: H&M, Scarf: chiffon fabric, Shoes:  LeBunny Bleu 
(The oxfords from LeBunny are so comfortable!)

I'll share some of my artwork assignments from this past quarter in my next post.  That's pretty much been my life for the past couple of months so my blog is going to be void of sewing projects for a while, but that'll change just after a couple more weeks into my break!

I hope you all have a lovely Thanksgiving! 

Support structure

It's been well over two months that I've been in Savannah now, and I'm definitely feeling homesick. I was organizing files on my computer the other day when I ran across these photos.  My sister took these photos of Libby (my dog) and me while she was in Indiana this past summer.  I didn't realize how much I've missed Libby until I saw these.  My mom says that every time she's on the phone with me, Libby sits at her feet and stares at the phone like she's listening to me.  How cute is that?! 

Being homesick and away from close loved ones is definitely more difficult than I first thought that it'd be.  Even more difficult - and what hit me unexpectedly - was the strong surge of grief that I'm still experiencing over my brother Daniel.  Daniel committed suicide a little under a year and a half ago, on Memorial Day, 2012.  Honestly, after the one year anniversary date of his death I was feeling emotionally better than I had all year.  I was doing fine and I felt like I had finally moved past the most acute grieving period.  I was so busy working and preparing for school that I was excited about the future and I didn't think about his death, or what had happened to him much. 

Now that I'm in school, and in a place where I don't have to think about the future just yet - it's hit me just how much I'm still dealing with the grief from his death.  Which is hard, because I wasn't expecting to have this hard of a time and that's hit me off guard. I often compare grief to the waves of an ocean.  Sometimes they’re small, and gentle - while other times they’re huge, overpowering, and will come out of a place of nowhere.  This makes it difficult being so far away from home and my main support system.  

I've never realized before just how good it is to be around people who already know my story.  If I'm sad, or upset, or just not talkative, my family knows why; even if I don't say anything.  I know that new, strong supportive structures will be made in time, and they're already starting to form right now - but at the moment I'm missing home and I can't wait to see my family again in 3 weeks.