A '70's inspired country wedding

I've wanted to show you this dress for ages, because I really enjoyed making it! It felt like a real  creative collaboration between myself and the bride Sarah's family - especially her mum, who deserves a medal for going over and above the call of duty in the crochet department!

I only have pictures of the later stages of the dress manufacture and the wedding, but the dress idea started from Sarah's mother's wedding dress which was from the 1970's and very of its time; it had quite a vintage hippy vibe to it, very free-flowing and made of cotton with embroidered areas, sleeves and flowery trim. I wish I had a picture to show you.

Anyway, Sarah wanted to emulate the feel of that dress but with a modern feel which was more 'her'.



This picture (above) of Sarah in an early fitting, shows her wearing the calico toile, which is perhaps closest in feel and look to her mother's dress, but without the embellishment. (That's my hand poking out from her back, I think I may have been hiding.)

During the early stages we discussed embellishment for the dress and Sarah spotted some crochet flowers on one of my existing dresses:



You can spot one of them at the base of one of the straps above and others behind and hanging off the corsage. I gave Sarah's mother the pattern for these flowers and she came up with these:

Aren't they great? So tiny and neat. I was impressed, and so was Sarah who decided to have a band of them around her dress under the bust line.

Here she is nearing the end of manufacture. The dress was made of a light silk satin backed crepe and several layers of silk Georgette, all in a lovely creamy, vanilla ice-cream colour. One of Sarah's main words for the original brief was 'comfort'.

So there's no boning, just lots of lovely fabric to relax and waft about in. The head-dress was her mother's original.

Back to the flowers, here they are on the actual dress. As the overall look was very matt, we decided to add some pearls to the centre of the crochet flowers, which helped hi-light them. And that frayed edge of Georgette above the flowers wasn't planned, we just liked the look of it during the fittings and decided to keep it that way.

That's me grovelling around with hem layers. You can see some of the multi layered feel of the dress as Sarah holds it during the fitting.

I'll show you the pictures of the wedding next time.