Make your own wedding dress!

Hello readers,

Welcome to my first blog post!I started this blog to share my experience as I make my own wedding dress. I am not a seamstress but I own a sewing machine and I know how to use it. If you are thinking that I must have had years of experience sewing, you are wrong. I simply wanted the wedding dress of my dreams without paying more than $200 for it.

The decision to make my own dress is quite an ambitious one for  me as I have actually only ever made three dresses in my life but I want to prove that it is possible. I of course did try on dresses before I made my decision. This is the dress I fell in love with and the one that my gown pattern will be based off of:

http://www.davidsbridal.com/Product_Organza-and-Tulle-High-Low-Gown-with-Beaded-Flower-SPK470

Before I even started working on my dress I knew I needed a dress form or mannequin. If you are considering making any kind of clothing especially dresses you NEED one of the two. Of course the nice dress forms cost around $100 or more and I do not have that much to spend so I followed this tutorial:

http://etsylabs.blogspot.com/2007/03/dress-form-tutorial-want-to-make-exact.html

And here is a picture of what I ended up with:

  

I followed the instructions in the tutorial and, with the help of my awesome fiance, put my dress form on an old lamp stand. To mount it on the lamp stand, We taped cardboard to the neck and arm holes (to close them off.) Then, cut a long rectangle of cardboard to attach to the lamp stand so the stuffing would have something to "stick" to. We attached the cardboard to the lamp post by cutting slits in the cardboard and weaving the lamp post through it. We stuffed it by holding the dress form upside down with the pole in the middle of it and putting stuffing from an old pillow in it until it was about the right shape. I then closed off the bottom with another piece of cardboard and TA-DA! If you want a tutorial with pictures comment. I can probably put one together. 

I started working on the dress about a month ago and have been slowly making progress. I made a trip to Joann fabrics first and talked with a lady at the cutting counter about my plans. It was awesome to hear her say, "If you are confident that you can do it, you will succeed." those were certainly the first encouraging words I received since everyone else (including myself) was skeptical.

I will post more about how I got started later! Thank you for reading! Happy Thursday afternoon!