Long-Distance W.O.W. (Work On Wedding) or When Jekyll & Hyde Make Couture Wedding Pieces

Mary & I have plans to work on Stephanie's wedding dress this week, hoping to put it all together this time, and do final fitting adjustments when Stephanie is here again. Great!

Wait, that means I need to have fabric & pearl flowers made up to actually sew on the dress. I don't have any ready. Dang!

So I went fabric shopping, taking along snatches of the dupioni and lace that we're using on Stephanie's gown. It took a couple visits to a couple different stores till I found fabric to match the color of Stephanie's dupioni, and some of the original lace - really pretty scalloped edges, lots of roses and leaves for cut outs. Great!

Over the next couple days I cut out fabric circles and made as many of the fabric & pearl flowers as I had pearls for. Great!

Ran out of pearls. Dang!

Thinking about how many more flowers we may need, I ordered more pearls. Great! They won't be here till middle of the week. Dang!

In the meantime I decided to look for lace to match what we're using on Stephanie's skirt. Maybe some of the fabric & pearl flowers should have matching lace. It's a good thing I ran out of nice pearls; now I can use matching lace on some of the flowers! Great!

The nearest store to have it on hand was JoAnn's Fabrics up in Wausau. 40 minutes away. Dang.

Since Tom was going up that way to play a gig he picked up more lace! Great!

I still have to wait for the pearls, though. Dang.

In the meantime, Stephanie and I exchanged photos of hair band possibilities. This is the first one we looked at together and thought was really pretty. Did some experiments with making my own tiny flowers. Burned my fingers. Dang. And the flowers looked horrible. Dang again. Went shopping for suitable small woodland flowers, vines, etc. Disappointed with selection available. Turns out most stores are now stocking fall colors - I should have done this a couple months ago. Double dang!

Nevermind. I'll make it work. Wait, did I just say that? I KNOW things never work when I say I'll make them work! Dang, dang, dang!

But wait! I had sent Stephanie this pic! And she really liked that! Great! I can totally do that! I feel super confident that I can make something just like that! So, I went shopping once more, taking my fabric scraps with me again ("Yay, another car ride!", they seemed to say), looking for just the right ribbon to match. Hmmm, what to do? Several widths and colors to choose from, white, ivory, cream... I picked up a few choices. My scraps were getting tired and cranky and needed a nap, and I wanted to get started on this fabulous new project anyway, so, ribbons and scraps in hand, we went home. Great!

Um. The ribbons don't really match very well. But maybe that's not so important, as the ribbon would be on Stephanie's head, and not very near her dress. So I could get started on the ribbon. Make a prototype. Use D-grade pearls. Maybe add some gaudy colors to highlight that this is a prototype, not the real thing. Just to test out materials.

Um. The ribbon is really slippery. And not the right color. And that is bugging me. Wait! I have matching lace! Two kinds! Wouldn't that be pretty as a hair band, with pearls sewn on! I could cut out some leaf & rose shapes from one type of lace and lay them over the dotted lace and add pearls on top of that... There, that's really pretty.

Wait, the lace is pretty stretchy. How's that going to work? I could put the lace over the ribbon. Which is ... dang it! Slippery. No, I could put the lace over some dupioni! Ooo, just like the dress! But wait. Now it's going to be bulky. Who wants a big honkin' bulky hair band on her wedding day? Dang it, now I spilled pearls all over the floor. Which is uneven. Now the pearls are playing hide and seek, and it's hot upstairs in my sewing room, and I'm hungry and frustrated and tired. Time for supper and walking in my garden.

Much better. Fed and rested and thinking straighter, I decided to listen to a nagging little beast of a thought whispering in the back of my mind. Dupioni. Already matches, same fabric. Cut on bias, would make a nice ribbon. Wait, it would make a perfect ribbon! And I love perfect!

Reinvigorated, I bounded upstairs, determined to create a masterpiece. Or at least a prototype, with a masterpiece to come. Hmmm. Mary offered me bigger pieces of dupioni and I declined. Why did I do that? Dang.

Never mind! I have a longish piece that's already kind of on the bias; I'll just cut some strips from that and make a ribbon and have the pearls sewn on in no time! Yay!

Dang. Not enough of a bias and it's gonna fray. And I only cut it a little more than an inch wide, so it's gonna be really narrow if I sew it into a tube... Well, what the heck, it's a prototype anyway, right? This is a learning experience, not supposed to be perfect yet, remember?

Some time later...

Tube sewn, turned, ironed, and looking really nice. Hmmm. Pearls. Sorted all the white pearls away from the peach, mauve, lavender, rose, pink pearls. Oh! I have jonquil and topaz crystals - really tiny ones. And peridot chips! Oooh, this could turn out really pretty. How about a few peach and rose pearls, too. It's woodland, it's romantic, it's elegant.

Bridal hair band prototype

Here it is! Looking really pretty, as predicted! And Stephanie loves it!

You know, I could sew some satin ribbon on the ends, make the ties long enough to tie easily...

But this was so much fun, I want to make another one!

Wait. I'm really out of pearls now. Dang.

Pearls have been shipped! I'll be able to make more this week! Great!