Making a wedding dress part 2: beginning draping

Draping began in January 2010. I had bought a couple of 10m lengths of calico (muslin) from Whaleys of Bradford, one length of heavy and one of light, for the draping. We had decided that there would be some kind of sheer draping over the dress, which was why I used two weights of calico. I hadn't draped much before, so found it a bit counter intuitive at first, especially in making the bodice. S wanted strapless at this point, so we wanted a lot of security. After a bit of faffing (OK, weeks of faffing), I decided that reinventing the wheel was a waste of time, and I went out and bought Simplicity 5006. You might remember that S didn't want a lace up back, so a little adaptation was necessary. The gap at the back was meant to be 2" so I went up a side and traced off some facings for a side fastening. Here is the finished toile of the corselette for inside the bodice

From 2010-03-05

The straps are from a bra I put on the dress form so I could give it some boobs (dress forms have stubbornly pert and solid boobs). The lace? Well by this point, S had seen a picture of Ivanka Trump's wedding, and decided that what is good enough for Ivanka is good enough for her, in particular S had fallen in love with the lace at the top of the bodice. Apparently Ivanka was inspired by Grace Kelly's wedding dress for her Catholic (rather than civil) wedding to Prince Rainier of Monaco. Anyway, more of that shortly.

The intention was not to have a bodice and a separate skirt, but to have an under corset supporting a one piece dress, with lace and draping on top. Being more of a pattern cutter than a draper, I traced off the bodice pieces and drew on skirt pieces. When I made the toile the centre front hung unflatteringly between the legs, giving the impression of culottes. Now I got the point of draping. I traced off the bodice pieces again, but didn't cut at all below the bottom of the bodice. I was then able to pin the pieces close to the hip on the dress form and down the seams of the skirt for a pleasing line. I wish I'd have taken pictures of the mistakes I'd made up to this point! I didn't even take a picture of the toile without the lace, but here is what the actual dress looked like before I put the lace and draping on (and before it had an iron! I didn't want to press it too much before the fitting)

From 2010-05-06

While there was a lot of work still to come, having a functional dress-shaped thing was quite exciting

Next time I'll go through draping the lace and the lightweight calico, including the smocking technique you see on the finished dress