The official wedding photos are back from my uncle’s wedding! And I got permission from the photographer Chelsea (at Storied Exposure) to use any photos I wanted on the blog, so here we are. 🙂 Chelsea was really lovely to work with and really put everyone at ease during the event. You can check her out on her Facebook page and website, as linked. If you’ve been following along with the blog you will have read a bit about my process, but if you haven’t you can find those posts here and here. My mum’s dress for the wedding (not pictured below) is here. I didn’t make all of the dresses below. Luckily, some people (mostly those coming from Ontario to Nova Scotia) opted to buy their own, which really saved me from last minute fittings and stress. From left to right below: Sharlene (me-made), Emma (store-bought), Jen (me-made), Amy (me-made), Dana (bride, definitely NOT made by me!), Helen (store-bought), me (me-made), Donna (me-made), and Audrey (store-bought). I won’t put up the names of the little girls for privacy reasons. So I made 5 out of the 8 bridesmaids dresses!
I’ll start with Jen and Sharlene. In the above photos, they are leftmost and third from the left respectively. They both chose the same pattern, which is McCall’s 6713 – it seems to be out of print now. I bought it AGES ago. It was actually one of the first patterns I made when I was on my way to getting the clothing bug. I made the full length version with three-quarter length sleeves for myself, because it was intended as a concert outfit for my orchestra concerts. I didn’t know about the ease in the Big 4 patterns yet, and didn’t know about muslins, so it’s a bit big. I did wear it quite a few times though, and still got compliments on it, but haven’t worn it in maybe 3 years now. Basically ever since I made my full-length black V8955 pants, I haven’t wanted to wear anything else ever while playing orchestra concerts (I’ll likely do a blog post about my collection of that pattern in future).
ANYWAY. Since I’d made this dress pattern before, I luckily knew how it went together quite well. Something I’m not a big fan of in the pattern is that the bodice is fully lined, which I find can make it quite heavy. This cotton-spandex jersey luckily was lighter weight but still supportive, so it didn’t give the dresses the same heaviness that my previous black version had. They both picked the knee length with cap sleeves. The pattern has an elastic waist, which made it really easy to fit. Both of them liked how the bodice fit on them from my test versions, so all I did was make them again in the real fabric and hold off sewing the elastic ends together until they’d tried it on and decided how tight they wanted the waist to feel. I’m happy with how both turned out, and they looked great swishing around in them. The skirt has a little drape on it, which added to the effect. (In the photo below, Jen is second from left and Sharlene is third bridesmaid from left, on either side of the little ring-bearer.)
Before I continue: can I just say that I always find it hilarious when there are these group wedding photos where everyone is “casually chatting”? They do often look really cute, but I always think to myself “ah yes, I have dressed up in the same colour as everyone else just to hang out and chat casually all in a line”, haha. In all of the photos we did in this chatty category, I was standing next to my sister and ended up turning to her and saying something along the lines of “Ha ha ha I love exchanging witty repartee while standing in a row!” And yet somehow below it looks actually plausible that we would do such a thing. The magic of weddings, I suppose!
Next up, I want to talk about Donna’s dress. In the photos directly above and below, she is second from the right. She picked M7350, view D. This version has a higher collar, faux-wrap front, and a full-length hi-lo hem. I don’t know why I left this final version as the last bridesmaid dress to sew. I had never sewn the pattern before, and for the fitting had left off the skirt because it’s a LOT of fabric to use just to test the length of something and I knew I could fix that at the end. It looks great on Donna in the photos, and in person, but I honestly would not make this pattern ever again. I find the way the Big 4 treats their knits is really odd in terms of sizing, as well as the techniques involved. Like, SO much gathering in this one especially. You gather the bottom of the front and back bodice, you gather the sides of the midriff and sew it to a flat midriff lining, and you gather the skirt onto the midriff as well. I know the effect is supposed to be as though it’s a true wrap dress with a waist tie, and I’m on board with that, but the midriff especially gave us a lot of problems. I find the fabric has a tendency to not lay in a pleasing gathered manner and instead tends to bunch toward the skirt. The elastic of the waist is inserted in the seam between the bodice and the midriff, which may contribute toward this effect. Again, it looked good on her, but before it was completely finished I did wonder if I was going to have to hand-tack parts of the midriff to the underlying pieces in order to make it lay evenly gathered. Luckily I didn’t have to do that, because it would’ve been a nightmare!
I also had to cut something between 7″ and 10″ off the hem all the way around. I wish I wrote this down, but I just made chalk marks on the dress when she had it on, and ended up taking different amounts off the front vs. the back and grading between those amounts as I went around the sides of the dress. The length turned out really well, I think. The final fitting for this one happened in the bathroom at my uncle’s house at a barbecue two days before the wedding, and I was armed with hand-sewing needles and thread and my snips in case I did have to do some tacking on the midriff, but luckily everything looked good and I got to leave it alone!
Oh! And one other thing I forgot. The pattern envelope shows this view as having cap sleeves similar to the ones on the M6713 dresses above. But that is NOT what came out in real life. They were weirdly protruding off the shoulder like 3-4″ outward and not shaping to the arm, and acting sort of like…flutter sleeves? But not in a good way. Like a real bad way. But the bottom/sides of the armhole fit really nicely, so I was initially at a loss as to how to fix this problem without changing everything. My solution was to fold the cap part that extended outward back into the armhole at the top shoulder seam, I think by 4″, and then handsew the edge to the seam allowances on the inside of the shoulder to turn it into a sleeveless effect. You might be able to tell what has been done now that I’ve told you, but I think it was a pretty efficient solution to the problem and not noticeable as a quick-fix instead of a design detail.
Finally, my sister and I both chose B6453 for our dresses. I’ve since made a couple more, (here and here) and I really love this pattern! It’s so fun to have such a swishy skirt. I didn’t have to make any alterations to my sister’s, and to mine I shortened the bodice by 1″ and took 2″ or so off the straps. On future versions, I added back 1″ total to the waist to allow for more comfortable eating, since when raising the waist line it changed how the dimensions fit my body. Below is a picture of my sister and I with our uncle, the groom! (He got married on his birthday!)
Overall, this was a crazy project and I’m glad that I said I would do the labour as a gift, because if I hadn’t it would have lead to one of those awkward scenarios where you end up charging your family members WAY less than the actual time/effort because otherwise it would be insanely expensive. Much easier to say this was my wedding gift. It was fun to work with different people than I usually sew for, and a definite challenge! Probably not going to do it again any time soon, but it was a good experience and I learned a lot!
