Making my wedding dress: gathering the materials
Welcome back to my wedding dress series, where I walk you through every step of creating my wedding dress from scratch. In this post, we’re going through the materials you will need to make the test version of the dress.
Materials:
Steamer (optional, but helpful)
All Purpose Thread - 800m
Silk Thread - 600-800m
Underwire channeling - 4 yards
Rigilene boning - I bought 10 yards because it was cheap. I ended up using about 5 yards with all of my various test dresses, but you will probably only need 2-3 yards.
2” Horsehair trim - 15 yards
1/4” Elastic - 2 yards
Pearl buttons - 10mm
Muslin - 10 yards
Silk Chiffon - 3 yards
Silk Charmeuse - 3.5 yards
Silk Organza - 8 yards
Fusible Interfacing - 1/4 yard
In the last post, we made adjustments to the pattern pieces of the Rose Cafe Bustier and the Sati Skirt, so that the pieces will fit together (and fit you) perfectly, and then cut those pattern pieces out of muslin.
Now, we are going to make sure we have allll the materials we need to make both the test version of the dress and the final dress. If you are just looking to buy the test dress, purchase everything on the list above, and omit the silk fabrics and silk threads.
A note on purchasing silk - there are so many different types of silk, and they all fill a different purpose. Here, I chose to use silk charmeuse as my base layer, because it is soft, light, and buttery. It flows over the skin, and contours the body beautifully. I layered that with silk chiffon to create a flowy and ethereal look. Then, I used silk organza for the overskirt and the puff sleeves, because it has good natural structure.
If you are wanting more of a patterned lace, you could definitely purchase that instead of the silk chiffon to layer on top of the silk charmeuse. I decided against it because 1. silk lace is extremely expensive, and 2. my original intention was to appliqué lace details on top of the bustier. Unfortunately I did end up running out of time, but I am still really happy with how my dress turned out.
Once you have all the materials gathered, you’re ready to make the sample dress! In the next post, we will go over sewing the sample dress, and all the mistakes I made, so that you don’t have to.