Tulle Attacks

It's been a busy couple of weeks around my house. My youngest brother got married.

It was a pretty big deal. 

My other brother was the best man, my mother took care of the flowers, my father did his best to keep the groomsmen in line, and I was a bridesmaid. Oh, and I made the flower girl dresses. All six of them. 

Yes, I am partially responsible for the small army of fluffy white dresses that bounced down the aisle, warming up the crowd for the grand entrance of the beautiful bride. 

There wasn't a pattern that matched the vision that the bride had for her herd of attendants, so I improvised. 

I started with this pattern from McCall's. Simple, fully lined, tank dress. All I needed to do was add a tulle skirt to match the bride's. Cutting out all of the satin and lining was a piece of cake. 

I quickly realized that I needed a way to keep track of which pieces belonged to which little girl. Paper grocery sacks did the trick.

I serged all of the pattern pieces individually before sewing them together. To get lovely finished arms and necklines without hand-stitching (who has time for that?!), I used this technique. It took a few tries to get it just right, but it was totally worth it. Since the dresses were so small (definitely not what I am used to), it took quite a bit of clipping around the seams in order for them to lay nicely.

Once the bodices were finished, I started working on the skirts. The pattern had a front piece and two back pieces. I cut them out separately for the skirt lining, sewed the front and backs together, and gathered it along the top to match up with the bottom seam of the bodice. I cut one layer of petticoat netting by lining up the pattern pieces into one continuous piece. I gathered it, then stitched the already gathered skirt lining.

I figured I needed at least three layers of tulle to achieve sufficient fluffiness, so I lined up the pattern pieces, marked one layer, moved the pattern pieces, marked the second layer, moved the pieces a third time, and cut. I gathered that giant, unwieldy piece to three times the length of the bodice, then sewed it to in one, continuous circle to the lining/netting. It looked like this:

I looked like I needed a Xanax by the time I was through with all six skirts.

I slit the tulle in the back so the girls could be zipped in and out of it, attached the giant, fluffy thing to the bodice, put in an overlapping zipper, sewed the back pieces of the skirt lining together, and stitched down the bodice lining.

I covered some buttons with scrap satin from the bodice and put them on the flap of fabric that covers the zipper to match the bride's dress. I made the hem on the lining much wider than normal, so no one would trip. The sash is a piece of chiffon that I cut into six pieces that matched the color of the bridesmaid dresses perfectly.

For the final touch, I embroidered the girls' names inside the dresses with blue thread.

That's it. A month's worth of work for one big, beautiful day.

This is one of my favorite pictures of the day so far. Beautiful work by CarisDesign