Sarah's Techno Wedding Dress

It really is true that time flies when you're having fun! The summer has been a whirl-wind of weddings, sewing projects, construction and gardening. Some fantastic projects have wrapped up and here are some pictures and a video from the first wedding of the summer, Jeff and Sarah O'Donnell.

If you want to know what it's like to have a a dress custom made for you, this is the post to read!


Sarah's techno wedding dress, walking down the isle with her dad in a stunning rooftop ceremony over Puget Sound in downtown Seattle.

"The dress is amazingly perfect! I could have never envisioned such a beautiful finished piece. You are my fairy godmother of wedding dress wishes! Your unbelievable talent, great taste, fantastic work ethic is going to take this world by storm."

Sarah Jones
www.productionbysarah.com

Sarah had tried on dresses for over a year before contacting me about making a custom gown. We got together, looked at pictures and talked about what she was looking for. She put together a great presentation showing the full range of what she wanted both for the dress and the ceremony, which you can find here. You can also check out sketches and swatches from previous entries on my blog. It was important to Sarah that the dress be modern, sexy and bridal without being overwhelming or heavy. In addition the grooms mother is a dress maker and it was important to both of us that she appreciate and respect the gown.

We went through a few rounds of sketches while drafting and fitting her moulage. Because the dress had so much detail in the patterns and a lot of little pieces cut on "random" grain lines I made two muslin mock ups of the pattern before cutting into the fashion fabric. This allowed me to make subtle adjustments to the style lines and shaping of the bodice that I knew I had to nail down in advance. You can see the first fitting in the fashion fabric here.

And finally, a video tribute to the dress!


Such a beautiful and fun wedding!

Sarah's techno wedding dress

Another wedding dress for a dear friend from back in the day! I met Sarah and Jeff their freshman year of college when living in the dorms at Webster University in St Louis MO and they have since moved to Seattle. After about a year of looking for wedding dresses Sarah was confident that she couldn't find the dress she wanted within her budget. Her ideal dress was modern, sexy and sparkly without being clingy, shiny or traditional AND it has to look good on her very petite frame.

Sarah and I met up and went over her collection of pictures, both from magazines and designers and of her in the dresses she had tried in stores. First I focused on finding the right bridal fabrics but found them all to be too traditional and a little expensive for the budget. A trip to Britex in San Francisco gave me some phenomenal cotton and synthetic blends with a subtle tone on tone sparkle that gives a very modern techno feel in a bridal color palate at a price point we could work with. It was the first time I had ever bought the fabric without the client seeing it but I was SO sure this was it I took the risk after emailing photos. Fortunately Sarah loved the fabrics I found and we nailed down a design. Here are the fabrics:

Iggy's Wedding Dress

My good friend Iggy is getting married (http://erinandabraham.com) and she commissioned me to make her wedding ensemble. I'm really excited about this because it's not going to be your average gown! After looking over her scrap book of ideas we came up with a 5 piece outfit. The basic outfit is going to be a camisole, matador pants, corset and short sleeve bolero but then to top it off there is going to be a huge show girl bustle made from layers of silk taffeta and sparkle netting!

We're well under way with the project, I started by drafting a moulage from her measurements and then drafted a custom pattern for all of the pieces. We've had our first fitting and I have to say that I was totally spot on with the corset and bolero! I decided to go back to the drawing board on the camisole, I just didn't like where I had gone. The pants we're re-fitting in muslin to guarantee the sexiest pink satin matador pants we've ever seen. I worked up a little sample of the bustle to check the interaction between the corset, pants, bustle and jacket back and the shape is great! We both really liked the texture and the way the colors worked together.

Here is a sketch of what we're working on and a picture of her fabrics: