Happy Birthday Monthly Stitch!

Heeeeeey,

First off, Happy Birthday Monthly stitch, second off, I have have something to celebrate too!  I got married on Saturday (and this morning)! Whoop whoop!  If your mind works at all like mine does, I’m sure you’re curious to know whether or not I made my dress.  Well yes and no.  Originally I was going to do the whole she-bang and then I realized that A. that’s a lot of pressure and B. I could make so many more casual clothes in the time it would take me to make a proper wedding gown.  So for our ceremonial wedding on Sat I went to your typical wedding dress warehouse and picked out a lovely, but affordable (for a wedding dress) number, and it was great.  Long, lacy, white, you know… a wedding dress.  I got lots of compliments, so I felt great about the choice.

A couple weeks ago though, right after I finished the plaid dress, it was irking me that I wasn’t going to tie the knot in a hand made one, so I decided to make one for our court appointment (when we would officially sign the legal docs, which was just this morning). So I present to you, my court wedding dress:

Since it was a special occasion and all I decided to go ‘all out’ and use a gift certificate I had been hoarding for none other than the infamous Mood.  It’s 4-ply, rag and bone silk, labeled beige, but it’s really more of a faint peach in person.  Either way at $25 a yard it was the most expensive fabric I have ever purchased.  On that note, this dress actually started out as the V-neck #5 dress from drape drape  (see my trifecta dress for reference), but the fabric had waaay too much body for all the tiny pleats in that pattern and having literally used all my expensive fabric to cut out the very large pattern pieces I had to re-work the skirt into something more flattering.  That’s how I happened upon this soft tulip shape, with a … wait for it…. bustle back!

Tell me that’s not gorg.  I can be somewhat self critical with my sewing (more so in person), but I really think this back came out almost perfect.  Especially given I had practically sewn the whole thing up as a 75% different dress and had to take the skirt off and completely re-work it (which involved more cutting, eek!) on my dress form.  I was super nervous people.  Plus I had a very set-in-stone deadline I was working under.  Either way it worked out.

….But that’s not all, because as you know, this is the #2 birthday challenge so when the original idea didn’t work out, I decided I was going to attempt to make this dress convertible for two separate looks! Bustled (with two buttons, and two thread loops (hello new sewing technique and thank you Meghan Nielsen for posting this tutorial like 2 weeks ago)) for a more cocktail look, or un-bustled for a high/low flowy look, ie version B:

When coming back from the clerk’s office I un-bustled it and it felt great catching the wind as I walked.  A view of the un-bustled back:

Anyways, that’s the dress, I hope you like it and ……Happy frickin’ Birthday Monthly Stitch!!

For a bonus court photo from this morning, check out my blog: Jinx & Gunner

Kten