A Wedding Gown

While I've been photographing my Forest Dweller Holiday Get-together, I've also started work on Naomi's wedding gown. Even though the wedding is still a long way off, there's lots to make beforehand, and I figured I'd start with the wedding gown, since it's the most important.

​I had originally thought something in light blue or pale green, in an Italian Renaissance  style like Lucretia wore in 'the Borgias' series a few years back.  But when I went through my fabrics, there wasn't anything useful in those colours.

​But a pale yellow sari jumped out at me....

Okay, so it was decided...the wedding gown was going to be 'gold'.  I went through my stash looking for other fabrics to support the colour choice, and laid them out....

Now, saris may be gorgeous on the right side, but are a mess of threads on the wrong side, so to hide that I'd need to line the semi-sheer sari with some very light cream cotton. It's been a bit of a challenge, since both fabrics are very fine, and very slippery, and every seam needed to be hand-basted first before any machine stitching. Thankfully my sewing machine didn't mind stitching through sequins, but it draws the line at going anywhere near any beading, so those areas had to be done by hand. It's taken me a week to prepare an underskirt and overskirt...

I finally finished an under-bodice this morning.  It has a picot beaded neckline of tiny cream pearls, and hand-sewn lace 'ruffles'.  I basted on the underskirt, and am ready to machine stitch it....but I was too excited and had to take some photos.

​I'm currently using Yvette as my model, since she doesn't have any body blushing, so won't suffer any accidental damage.

The overskirt was cut considerably longer so there would be a train in the back.  I pinned it into place, and slipped on the basic gold over-bodice. 

Right now the main bodice is still very plain.  I can't do any embellishment on it until I sew the sleeves into the armholes, and I haven't even started to figure those out yet....

I'm actually making two identical gowns (the second one is already spoken for) and I need to finish the second set of skirts and under bodice before I proceed any further with the first gown.

And I need to process the photos for the next instalment of the Forest Dweller Holiday Get-together. I finished photographing the final scene of the story this morning, and the entire set has already been taken down. So the dining room table is empty, and ready to set up for the next photos....

​....never a dull moment!