Making my wedding dress: the final dress (part two)

Welcome back to my wedding dress series, where I walk you through every detail of making my wedding dress, in the hopes that you can recreate it. In the last part, we started assembling the final dress, and made the detachable skirt. In this post, we will be finishing the dress - assembling the bustier and slip skirt, the puff sleeves, and adding the finishing touches.

Making the Rose Cafe Bustier

Daria pattern making, the designer of the Rose Cafe Bustier pattern, has an amazing Youtube video on assembling the bustier with boning and a lining. I really recommend following along with that as you make your final bustier.

Don’t forget to add your straps when making your bustier. The Youtube video’s bustier is strapless, and I forgot that step when making mine. It ended up being a small hassle, but was fixed easily enough.

Attaching the slip skirt

Sew your Sati Skirt, leaving the back center seam open. This will help you with installing the zipper. Attach the slip skirt to the bottom of your bustier, matching up all seams.

Before you sew on your invisible zipper, baste (either hand stitching or using the longest stitch length setting on your sewing machine) the buttonhole elastic to the center seam of the dress, about 1/2cm away from the center back edge. I basted the elastic on the left side of the dress, so that the buttons would lay on the right side. The elastic loops need to peak out from under the zipper.

Then, install your invisible zipper. Make sure your elastic loops are still visible when sewing in your zipper. I used this tutorial. If you’ve never installed an invisible zipper before, go ahead and practice it a few times on scrap fabric before putting it on your dress. Remember, silk is extremely sensitive, so once you start sewing, it is hard to undo any mistakes.

Once your zipper is attached, sew the rest of your back center seam, all the way to the bottom of the dress.

At this point, you should have a wearable garment, or the reception dress. This will be a bustier top with a slip skirt attached. The only things left to do now are the sleeves and adding the pearl buttons down the back of the dress.

Sewing the puff sleeves

For the puff sleeves, I used this guide to draft a rough sleeve pattern. Every sleeve pattern is a basic bell shape, and for these, you want to make the top of the bell flat and long, and much wider than a normal sleeve. The wider your bell is here, the puffier your sleeve is going to be.

I wanted HUGE puff sleeves that really added to the fairytale aesthetic. If that’s not your vibe, Daria Patternmaking made this video about making a dress with puff sleeves, which features a smaller sleeve. You could also forgo the sleeves all together, and just have the dress straps.

Using your drafted pattern piece, cut out four sleeve pieces from the silk organza. Each of the sleeves will be double layered to make them more substantial and structured. Using an overlock machine (Serger) or a zigzag stitch, finish all of the raw edges of the sleeves and attach the two pieces together.

puff sleeve diagram from halfsoybean on Youtube

Sew each sleeve together along the short, straight edge.

Finally, we’re going to make two channels for the elastic - one along the bottom edge of the sleeve, and one along the entire bell curve of the sleeve. This will create a place for the 1/4” elastic to live, and make the sleeves cinch, creating the puff effect.

To make the channeling, fold both the bottom edge and the edge of the bell curve over 1/2 cm and press, and then fold again 1cm and press again. You might need to clip notches (or little triangles) along the curved edge of the bell curve, so that the channeling lays flat when you sew it. Sew along the bottom of the pressed edge, creating a channel for your elastic to live inside. For the bottom of the sleeve, leave 1cm unsewn, so that we have a place to insert the elastic.

Cut four pieces of elastic. The first two will be this formula (=dress strap length - 5cm), and the second two will be this formula (=bicep circumference - 5cm). This will keep the sleeves nice and snug on your arm, but not too tight. Attach a safety pin to one end of the longer elastic, and insert it through the channeling along the bell of the sleeve. Sew the elastic to the sleeve at both ends. Repeat the process for the channelling at the bottom of the sleeve, and you should have a completed sleeve! Do this whole process once again, and it is time to attach the sleeves to the dress.

Attaching the sleeves

This was the most challenging part of the dress for me. I wanted to be able to remove the sleeves to create a second look for the reception. The sleeves needed to be secure enough to make it through the entire ceremony, but also easy enough for me or my husband to remove after the ceremony.

You will need eight 4mm buttons. You should have one edge of your sleeve without any sort of channeling on it. On either end, sew two 4mm buttonholes. It’s better to err on the side of smaller rather than larger. If the buttonholes are too big, your sleeve will come undone. If you have never installed a buttonhole, use this tutorial.

Your next two buttonholes are going to go onto the sleeve, next to your elastic casing. You want the sleeve to cover your existing dress strap. I measured where the buttonhole needed to be with while wearing the dress, so I knew the sleeve would match perfectly.

The four buttons will be sewn inside the dress (onto the lining). Sew the first two under the armpit of the dress, matching the buttonholes on your sleeve with the button location on the dress. The final two buttons will go next to your front and back shoulder strap, on the side closest to the center. Once you have the buttonholes and buttons sewn on, try on the dress with the sleeves. You want the sleeve to fit tight on your shoulder without falling down, and to be able to move your arms without the sleeve coming off the buttons.

Another optional thing you can do is sew a piece of string or ribbon into the top of your sleeve, so that you can tie it onto the dress straps to keep it secure. I ended up using embroidery thread to do this, but I don’t think this step was necessary.

If your sleeve is popping off the buttons, try putting your buttonhole farther up your sleeve, or hand sewing a few stitches onto the buttonhole to make it smaller. I ended up having to both of these things, and you could not see the extra buttonholes once the sleeve was on.

Attaching the pearl buttons

This was by far the easiest, but also most tedious part of sewing the dress. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and buckle in, because sewing on these buttons took me about an hour. Make sure you sew them on super tight - you don’t want any buttons popping off during the reception! I added pearl buttons onto both my reception dress and the detachable skirt for a cohesive look. The buttons are also optional, if you don’t like the look of them, you can go without!

Finishing touches

After the buttons are done, congratulations! You have completed your dress. You just need to do the last final touches. This includes snipping any stray threads, erasing any chalk or friction pen marks, and giving it a good steam. I bought this garment bag to store my dress in until the big day. I liked this bag because it had a little pocket, where I put wedding day essentials like extra buttons, a needle and thread, and my phone charger.

In the next post, I will share my final thoughts on making the dress, whether or not I thought it was worth making my own dress, the final cost breakdown, and pictures from my wedding.

Thank you for following along with this series. Making my wedding dress is my biggest sewing accomplishment to date, but I’m glad to see it behind me.