Rachel Lamb Bridal Design

Meet our Christmas tree fairy, she was chosen by my daughter. Coincidentally, her dress is quite wedding-y, don't you think? This is my last post this year, Christmas is coming, and I'm becoming very side-tracked by stuffing recipes (I'm not a stuffing person myself, so this is a challenge for me) and the fact that it's now less than 10 days away! It's been an amazing year, I'm not going to recap, but thank you for reading, sticking by, and for your personal support. Next year promises to be a little different - I want to say back to normal - but forward to normal seems more appropriate. Please stop by in the New Year for news. Anyway, our fairy has inspired me to compile a small Winter Weddings board on Pinterest: If you're getting married over the winter season, have a lovely time. Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Rachel X

'Fallon' wedding dress   Fallon dress has a bodice made of ivory silk with an ivory and gold beaded lace applique. The skirt section is ivory silk with ivory organza draped overlay. 'Emily' 2-piece wedding dress Emily 2-piece is a n ivory strapless dress with a n ivory lace over-s hirt. You can see Emily here . 'Albertine' wedding dress Albertine wedding dress is dark ivory ruched bodice with a rose print bust section, and a dark ivory silk skirt section overlaid with tulle. I'm working hard on many things at once at the moment - why does that always seem to happen just as Christmas is looming? One of them being my new website which should be launched soon. Can't wait for that! Promoting the new designs is top of my agenda, as well as promoting the design aspect of my work, so I've started some sketches of some of my new designs, which will also appear on the new website. In time, these items will be professionally phot...

  No.4     No.1  No.2   No.3 Well I've been making some bridal accessories. What with making wedding gowns and the like, there can often be fabrics and bits of trims left over which causes me angst as I'm not always too sure what to do with them. I know I want to make something, but what exactly? This is often a dilemma for me. Probably because the majority of pieces are ivory. My brief for this type of thing is that it has to be reasonably quick to make, as this means reasonable price to purchase, and that I'll want to keep making them alongside the work intensive wedding dress side of things. Anyway, these fit my creative comfort zone. I hope you like them. They aren't priced yet, but will be soon, and these and others like them will be for sale shortly. More details on that in a while. In the meantime, if you do like them and want to know the price, just let me know. These are modelled by my chum Zoe who k...

As the title says, Emily sample dress is now finished. It's actually a two piece outfit - the lace top can be removed and the belt worn with the strapless dress underneath. I was all set to continue photographing the under-dress when the battery went on my camera, so those pics will have to wait for a bit. I decided to lightly bead the neckline of the strapless dress underneath - last week I wasn't sure. I hope you can just about see the beading on the dress through the lace. The dress is made from ivory silk Dupion, which is a pure silk and reasonably crisp, but it could be made in a variety of fabrics for a shinier, smoother or floppier look if you prefer. A different shade to the under-dress could perhaps also work with the ivory lace too. This dress is for my Collection. Which means it's there for you to try on and order as a made to measure design or to use as a starting point for a Bespoke design of your own. As with all my designs, you can ...

  It's been a busy few months of adaptation work wise. I'm someone who has always felt comfortable with entire open days of practical work time that enable me to really get my teeth into finishing something big reasonably quickly. With family around - school days and holidays, this isn't really feasible these days, so I've been practicing working within the time I actually have available. Sounds obvious doesn't it? But it's something that up until recently, didn't come easy to me. I really do have to practice it! However, recently my brain has started to slot things into place - prioritise - and it's becoming easier. What has happened is that shorter periods of time have enabled me to get on with some of the smaller projects I always have on the go and never finish, such as the headbands above. They are work in progress. These have been on the cards for a while as alternatives to headdresses or tiaras. I will find someone with a beautiful head...

  What could be more exciting than to organise your wedding under the guise of a garden party? That's what Allyson did with the help of her friend Paula (seen above in blue). Not wanting the day to be formal in any way, none of the guests knew Allyson and Clive were getting married until she appeared in her dress and was walked down the aisle by her sons to the accompaniment of a gospel choir! Well the day was perfect, the weather was splendid and everything went well. Allyson's knee-length dress was a peach silk overlaid with ivory pearl-beaded lace and she looked stunning! When Allyson first came to see me she thought she might have a longer length dress, but after sleeping on it for a while, the decision to go shorter, and be more 'her', was made. Allyson sent me a very special thank you card telling me all about the day, and I wanted to share the following kind words of hers: 'Rachel, I can't tell you how blessed I was to meet...

I've finished this collection dress, and named it Bubble. It's always been Bubble in my head and so it remains, even though in the flesh it's not as bubbly in shape as the original sketch, but that could be a good thing overall. It's made from silk Organza twisted over silk Dupion to give some lovely textural folds to the shape at the hem, with the organza and oversize sequin applique and beading on top of the organza. It could be funky if made in another colour and not used for a wedding at all. It's definitely a non-standard type of dress, whether used for a wedding or not. It's simple, but interesting, and I hope you like it.

  Remember these? (The top swirly thing.) I recall it was commented that they looked like Iced Gems. They are a sewing 'doodle' that I worked on a while back. After wanting to use them for ages, but not feeling that anything was quite right, I've finally got around to using them on a new dress design which is currently still a work-in-progress, but here's a small preview: It's going to be short, light, simple and quirky. Something perhaps to inspire those who would like to wear something a bit different and fun. It's certainly not a traditional gown, but that's the whole point. I'll show some more pictures of the whole thing soon, when it's finished. I hope that you like it.

I tend to forget to put up work in progress, working on wedding gowns tends to be a kind of 'ta-da' type of thing, and I end up only showing the end product. So in an attempt to break this habit, this is what I've been working on this week: The last ever Gaia dress (possibly): Gaia has been one of my most popular gowns ever, and as a result I've kept it going for years and made it for many happy brides either as the sample design, or altered the design slightly to suit the client. Sadly the lace is no longer as easily available as it once was, and I'm thinking of discontinuing the design. I'm not really sure actually. I'm pondering it. Either way, I will design a newer version. I'm designing new gowns and will be making them shortly. These snippets are straight from my sketchbook, so they'll probably change as the design is developed while being manufactured. The quilt progresses. In typical personal-project fashi...

I have been meaning to show this image for a few weeks now, but school holidays were in the way. Now they're over, here it is! This is Sophie whose dress I made last year and who I have shown pictures of before. However, she recently had the gown re-photographed and sent me this and I think it's splendid! I hope you do too. The gown is a two-piece, a detachable cape/train with a strapless dress lace dress underneath. I'm very excited about these images, it's always lovely to receive pictures of my work. I have used the top image in some of my new adverts.

This is Rachel wearing her fabulous floaty silk chiffon wedding dress. Rachel had specific ideas about the exact colour of her dress, which she didn't want to be standard ivory. After deliberating over many shades we chose a kind of pinky-goldy-champagne (can't be more specific!) type of colour that worked very well with the off white crochet-lace trims. Out of necessity, the chiffon on the dress bodice is all hand pleated and hand-sewn.  Rachel was very sure she didn't want a twinkly dress or any bling of any sort, the dress was a simple design where the chiffon was used both to provide texture and wafty floatiness. But we decided to add some pearls and tiny silver glass beads to the trims as well, which gives a tiny gleam to the ensemble. As Rachel is tall she can carry off this hipster style of dress well. She looks stunning!