The Island of Misfit Wedding Projects

Nothing, and I do mean nothing, went as planned on our wedding day.  It's an epic tale of personal despair, lost luggage, emergency room visits, sleep deprivation, and crankypants five year olds.  I just don't feel up to talking about it yet.

Don't get me wrong.  Despite the things that went wrong, it was still a beautiful ceremony and a beautiful moment.  I just never, ever, ever want to do it again.  Maybe not such a bad feeling to have going into a marriage.

What I find myself dealing with now is a big box full of unfinished and unused wedding items and only a handful of receipts.  What to do?

Some of it will definitely be returned.  However, some things are just begging to become something else.

Stay tuned, we'll see what kinds of things I come up with!

Flower Making for Beginners

When Youtube tutorials fail . . .

Source

Pick up a freaking book.

I found this little beauty at the local library and it has given me the confidence to forge ahead in my crafty pursuits.  It's not live action step by step process but I find these illustrations and tidbits incredibly helpful.

Useful tips include using oil pastels and markers to add shading and depth to crepe paper flowers and how to wire petals and leaves.

I highly recommend it!

Hair Trials and Tribulations

I have no idea if it is too early to be talking about this.  I have no idea where in the wedding planning time line hair trials and all that jazz falls.  I can't handle time line pressure-which is why I religiously avoid the knot.

Anyway, I have been concerned about my hair and what to do with it pretty much from the proposal.  I'm still learning the basics of caring for my natural hair and as you an see, it's preferred shape is rather Russian hat-like . . . . as you might have noticed in my last post.

Observe . . .  Me. . .

 . . .  and lady in a Russian hat.

Source

 Okay, so I might have some hair issues.

I wrote about my "natural hair journey" here but I find that I'm struggling with my hair more as I try to decide what to do for our wedding day.  In the past, when my hair was straight, I would curl it for special occasions.  Now that my hair is kinky-curly . . . I just don't know.

Should I straighten it?  Flat ironed it would look a little something like this-

I have a lot of hair but I don't really want to straighten it for the wedding just to put it back up in a bun or whatever.  I can't leave it loose-because it grooooows.  I wore this hairstyle to work and by the time my shift was over it was pretty much standing straight up in the back.  Plus it's going to be hot and hair on my neck was so sweaty and annoying.

This is how it usually looks-my go to day to day style is a twist out set.

It lasts about a week and it works pretty well.  I do, however, have to beware the Frederick Douglass.

"What's that?" you ask.

FD in full effect

 This.  I'm not kidding when I say my hair grooooows, lol.  Strategic bobby pin placement will save the world one day y'all.  I'm sure it already has on some episode of McGyver.

Anyway-this is basically the style Wes and I are leaning towards.  We like it-it suits my face and it's good for my hair.  It's reliable and easy to do myself.  How to make it wedding-y though?

I could add some narrow ribbon and a flower.  This could be really cute with the added benefit of keeping my hair off of my neck and off of my face.

Source

 I really like the structure of this one and I wonder how it would look on me.  Since I will be doing my hair myself* I will get started attempting different styling techniques every week until I come up with something I like.



Our mission-cute wedding hair style.  Our obstacles: the Russian fur and the Frederick Douglass.  Can we do it?  I think we can.

Join me!

*I could go to a salon but since cutting off my relaxed ends I have really been focusing on maintaining and caring for my hair myself.  Also, the salons I can afford don't have a lot of experience with natural hair and I'd rather not take the chance of permanent damage for a one day look.

Project Wedding Dress: Fitting the Pattern

Remember Plan B?

I am pleased to announce that we are a go!  My unaltered muslin of the bodice just was not happening, so I went back to the pattern and used my handy freezer paper to make some adjustments.

Most patterns are drafted with a B cup bust.  And, well, I have way more than that up top.  I measured my bust and decided to try a full bust adjustment because the difference would make up a lot of those inches in the back.  I followed these instructions from Sew, Mama, Sew! for how to make a full bust adjustment on princess seams.  If you want to try this yourself, I suggest you follow her tutorial, since she has respectable and clear pictures without all the background clutter that I have here.

First, here is the unaltered pattern which I laid out for tracing.  You can kind of see how slight the curve is so really, I should have known this was not going to handle my bust.

Note: lay out your pattern pieces the same way you would on actual fabric.  If it says cut on fold or cut two, for example, go ahead and do that.  Here is a traced off piece.  Also, make sure you label them once you trace them.  I also had to do some fiddling to find the bust point since it wasn't marked on my pattern.  (Fiddling equals eyeballing and boobage poking.)

And here, is the final bodice side front.  I spread like five inches here.

You also want to make sure that you lengthen the bodice front as required.  Here is the altered bodice side front as compared to the bodice front.  See how it is longer.

Here it is evened out.  You want to spread the same distance so don't just eyeball this.  Measure.

Now it's time to put your paper pieces together.  Follow the seam allowances called for in the pattern.  I tried to stitch mine on the sewing machine.  People stitch paper right?  That didn't work well for me, but you might want to try it yourself.  My stitches were so close together that it ended up kind of cutting the paper.  I ended up pin fitting it along the sides.

Pin fitting on pattern tissue sucks, but freezer paper didn't tear or rip unless I applied focused force so it worked out pretty well.

The finished product.  Easing the curves in creates the bodice curve.

Here it is on me.  I didn't put a zipper in or anything but I did put on my strapless bra to try it.  This was just to pin fit the pattern.

This is a much better fit than the first, unaltered muslin.  It comes up higher in the front and fully covers my breast.  More to the point, it now meets in the back.

Next steps:

I need to take this apart and retrace these altered pieces and transfer and relocate markings. 

I think I'm going to buy some plain muslin to fit as well so I can have a nice clear background and to get a better feel for how it looks along the upper edges and pin out any extra fabric.

I also have plans for sweethearting the bodice front. 

Then, I think I will probably add more boning and more support to the bodice than the pattern calls for. 

I also think I'm going to use a skirt from another pattern so hopefully I will only need to adjust for length there.

Then . . . I will take apart that muslin and use those pieces to cut out the pattern for the real deal wedding dress.  Definitely a long way to go but I'm excited to be making progress.

Fitting Woes . . . and Plan B

You might recall that I decided, because I'm awesome like that, that I was going to sew my own wedding dress.  You might recall this dress from my inspiration post.

Source

I love this dress.  It's a strapless A-line, sweetheart neckline, cummberbund detail that could give me the illusion of a waist, and pockets! It's looks so light and airy.  (I also can not find the name or style to save my life.  It's a Watters gown and the Mojave looks the most similar.)  I was thinking about making a short version . . . and I still might, but I might go long for the wedding.  Why?  Well, in my mind that means I don't have to worry about shoes.  I like that option.  I am tempted to go for white for the same reasons and also because I'm having trouble finding fabric in a shade of pink I like.

I went shopping at Jo-anns during a pattern sale and I found this.

Source

The bones are there. Just disregard the tulle, the ribbons, and the fake flowers.  I will admit though that an organza overlay might be the business--and a nice fit for obnoxious baby pink.  It doesn't have a sweetheart neckline or pockets, but pockets are an easy fix and I think I could play around with the neckline a little as well.

The only problem?  The largest size doesn't fit--by like a lot.  (Insert horrified face here)

I couldn't wait too long to get my hands into it, so I went ahead and cut it out of a sheet I bought from goodwill to fit the pattern.  The bodice covers my boobs, but it doesn't come close to meeting in the back.  Agony! Defeat.  This thing must run pretty true to size because in the past I could always make it work.  I didn't take any pictures of that first fitting . . .  but I will as I go on.  Because I'm not giving up on dream dress.

I have a plan.  And that plan involves freezer paper.

Source

 I am going to make this dress fit.  I think a full bust adjustment and adding a few inches in the back would do it.  However, these call for alterations to the pattern.  I usually skip the pin fitting pattern tissue step because it is fucking ridiculous to try to wear tissue paper.  However, fitting paper would possibly save time in the long run so I thought maybe freezer paper would work better.  It's a little heavier, a little more sturdy.  (It also has all kinds of craft applications)  This could work right?

My plan is to trace my pattern pieces onto the freezer paper and I am going to baste that together on my machine and fit that.  If I can get it right on paper, I'll do another muslin and if it looks right in cloth, then I'll order the good stuff and get to work on that.

World domination would probably be easier . . . but as I can barely find that dress on Google image search it's the best I got!