I was so happy to hear that Jamie, my friend from way back at university, was getting married to the lovely Carolyn. When I first met Carolyn, her strong ethical values shone brightly and we quickly got into long conversations around allotments, vegetable growing and sustainability. I’d been describing how I’d been working on New Once Worn using recycled fabrics when she asked if I would make her wedding dress. What an honour!
We started with a brief – the dress was to be made from organic fabrics and must be suitable for a wedding in a field. With Carolyn in Manchester and me in Oxfordshire, we shared ideas on a secret Pinterest board and met halfway in Birmingham to go through the five designs I came up with. Shapes from Elfin princesses in Lord of the Rings were key to the designs and Carolyn was really keen to add some of her own craft to the dress by producing some hand-felting for sleeves. Carolyn’s Mum had also made some hand-crocheted flowers to decorate the dress. The design we decided on featured the beautiful drape sleeves and flowers perfectly. It also had a scoop neck, empire line and an overskirt with a split to reveal a coloured underskirt. Colour was also to feature heavily in the design.
Measurements were taken (in a café!) and the pattern drafting process begun. Whist the toile (mock-up) was being made and fitted, the hunt for fabric began. I looked at many web sites for organic fabrics and we decided on a colour-grown cotton which was a natural green colour for the bodice and over-skirt, and a hemp silk for the underskirt, tie and sleeve edges which was dyed green too. One of the key finds for the dress was organic lace from Lancaster and Cornish which we used as a trim for the sleeves and tie.
Just as I was about to get ahead of the game and start cutting the fabric (because I was just about to pack away my sewing things and move house), Carolyn told me that she was expecting a baby and would be 6 months pregnant by the time of the wedding! Thank goodness I hadn’t started cutting and we’d been generous with the amount of fabric we bought.
So, whilst Carolyn headed off for her first scan and I was starting to renovate my new house, I set about looking at where we could alter the design to accommodate a growing bump. Thankfully an empire-line style dress is well-suited to these types of alterations but one of the biggest headaches was trying to predict how big Carolyn would be by the day of the wedding. Instead of the bust being very fitted, we opted for gathers to accommodate any changes in size, and gathers were also added to the under-skirt. We probably went over-cautious with the amount of growing room but this really was the safest bet, especially with living 160 miles away from each other which made additional final fittings more challenging. In fact, the final fitting and marking up of the hem took place in the office shower room where Carolyn worked. It was quite a squeeze between the shower cubicle and the coatrack festooned with cycling lycra!
It was rainy morning in Mid-Wales when we travelled across to the wedding with the dress laid out in the back of the car. I dropped it off at the house where Carolyn was getting ready without getting a chance to see the bride herself, and starting praying that it was going to fit and be just as she wanted.
I remember the slight sense of panic when after we’d pitched our tent for the wedding, Jamie came up to me in the field and said how happy he was that I had made the dress for Carolyn, and how big she now was! Eeek! Fortunately, it was all fine in the end and Carolyn looked radiant. She had also very wisely got a warm, green cloak to wear with the dress on the slightly chilly and damp day. The weather certainly did not dampen the festivities though and it did stop raining for all the important parts!
Thank you Carolyn for letting me create a unique dress for your special day, it was such a privilege.
There will be another blog post to follow soon about how the leftover fabric from this project was used…
Wedding photos by Melia Melia Photography