Mrs Barry is here to stay

I have not fallen off the face of the earth, I promise! I am now the very happy, if slightly exhausted Mrs Jim Barry. The wedding had all the usual blunders that all weddings have, but just as I always said, at the end of the day, regardless of what went wrong, I am now happily married. We JUST got back from our honeymoon to the Outer Banks of North Carolina a few hours ago and in the coming days there will be MANY pictures, I'm sure, but to end for now, waiting with my father and about to walk down the aisle. Definately sneaking a peek :)

Ah, and because no vacation is complete without some kind of mishap, I ended my honeymoon with a bang...caused by accidentally hitting myself in the face with the bike rack on the back of our car. Now slightly bruised and swollen (in the middle of my freakin forehead!) I am going to log onto Perfect World and kill a few monsters before bed.

7 Days

7 more days to go. In fact, 7 days from now, we will be half way through our reception. I guess it's a good thing the dress is almost done, huh? That's right, I said "almost done". There's really not much left to do though, and depending on my sanity level, I should have it completed by tomorrow evening. Just need to figure out the bustle, attach the lining to the top of the bodice, finish sewing down the lace motifs around the shoulders and trim out the underlying lace. Please pardon the lack of pressing and crinoline. The crinoline is attached to the bodice lining, so it's not in there yet. Not to shabby, eh? When not on a mannequin with a big gaping hole in the middle of the chest, the lace lays very nicely, and I'm quite pleased with myself. All the lace motifs that trim the top and bottom edge of the bodice were harvested from my aunt's dress. I couldn't have asked for prettier trim!

Am I that dorky? Why yes, yes I am! I purposely planned the lace motifs across the center front so that they would form this little heart right smack dab in the middle. It's rather adorable I think.

The center back has almost the same effect, but not quite as obvious.

And boy, oh boy, am I glad I put a waist stay in! This is a heavy dress, but thanks to this little guy, it's not going anywhere! There are about 4 feet of train rolled up under that hem. It's a biggun'!

As the crinoline creates a fully lined skirt, I opted not to add an actual skirt lining, thereby adding more weight. I've got to be able to get this thing down the aisle without the aid of a small pony, which my father swears I'll need. Instead, I decided to just put some hem tape on and turn it up over the horsehair braid. It only took the better part of 5 hours to hand hem it to the underlining. That's not including the several hours it took to hand sew the horsehair braid in and even up the hem!

And now, in a moment of sheer brilliance on my part, I appear to have fractured my foot a week before my wedding. Good job, me. A friend and I are part of a choreographed performance at a WWII event at a local museum as part of their community outreach program. On Wednesday night we had our first practice and decided to try to perfect our frog jump, which we'd like to include at some point. For those of you that don't know what a frog jump looks like, check out this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siKuGLwF4yA

It's kind of like that, only assisted by your partner in a closed dance position and my whole body mass is about 6 feet in the air. The very first one we did, I came down a little hard on my foot but just laughed it off. We did so many that the next day my thighs were so sore I didn't even really notice the foot pain. By yesterday I was limping a bit and today my foot is swollen. Oh joy. Hope it heals quickly! Needless to say, Jim and I WON'T be going dancing tonight :(

Whew!

I've been doing all the prep for on my dress for weeks now, getting the mockup done, cutting the lace, cutting the interlining, etc. Basically everything BUT cutting the actual silk. Today Jim is out of the house for hours, so I figured it's now or never. I cleared the coffee table and other easily moved objects from the living room so I would actually have enough space to lay out the skirt pieces (which are enormous).

I never saw this coming. This does not happen to me. FABRIC PARALYSIS!

The minute I laid the fabric out my heart started to race. I stared at it, I touched it, I laid the pattern on it....repeat

I couldn't just sit there and stare at the fabric on the living room all night, especially since Riley is being so very well behaved and keeping his little doggy paws to himself and observing from afar.

Called Mommy for moral support. She gets fabric paralysis about cutting any fabric, so she knew exactly why I was freaking out. She calmed me down and talked to me about what a good man Jim is and how she truly feels that he's going to make a wonderful husband for me and that everything will turn out perfectly. End result: 30 minutes on the phone with Mom and two skirt pieces cut out. Heart still racing, but feeling pretty good about the whole thing now. Moms are the best

Weddings and Waistcoats

No turning back now! I've cut the lace. As there is no other way to mark this lace, I devotedly followed Susan Khalje's suggestion of thread tracing. So I traced...and I traced...and I traced

And I traced!

The tracing and cutting out (with no proper seam allowances, just huge amounts of lace on all sides) is as far as I've gotten. I had grand plans of at least getting all the beads removed from the seam allowances last night, but that was not to be. We drove to E-town last night instead to have dinner with Jim's family and drop off the flower girl's dress. It was great to get to visit with everyone (though the kids were bitterly disappointed that we didn't bring Riley) but it did cut into my sewing time, which is kind of critical right now. I'll just have to truck on through tonight before I go bowl for charity.

There just isn't much available sewing time this week. Tonight is bowling for Junior Achievement, tomorrow is a Louisville Bats game (I have a hard time passing up free tickets), Thursday is dancing at Porter's and Friday we're driving to Brown County (about an hour and 40 minutes away to pick up the newest addition to my sewing room. Today I confirmed my offer to buy an industrial straightstitch machine off of craigslist. I cannot wait to go pick it up! I'm so tired of having to fight with thick fabrics and not being able to stitch down the designs on a jackets that one of my customers brings me. No more trouble on that front though. This little baby will sew through just about anything...now where to put her?!

I'll have to be sure to get this new little number put well away before she gets here since I have a feeling she'll need some serious cleaning up done. Meet Charley's waistcoat. This is the first (nearly) completed piece to his Mr. Darcy suit. I've already gotten (and gotten out) lipstick on it, so machine grime is not really a welcome addition.

All this little guy needs now are buttons and buttonholes and he's ready to go home. The fabric is some kind of jacquard fabric (probably from the upholstry section) that my customers picked out before they hired me and I lined it with white linen from Hancock. It's fully lined with faux welt pockets and a lovely stand up collar.
I'm rather pleased with the result of my 2 days of work. Still have to tally up the hours spent, but all in all a breeze to put together and a fantastically drafted pattern from Rocking Horse Farms. Having been accustomed to working primarily with the Big 4, this was an absolute delight and I will be looking first to Rocking Horse Farms for all my historical pattern needs. Everything fit, there was no fussing or tucking or unnecessary easing and the directions were short, easy to follow and quite to the point. Love it!

My birthday wedding dress extravaganza!

It's really and truly dress shaped!

I'm finally starting to feel less defeated and stressed about this dress. Last night was my fitting for the final mockup for the majority of the dress! I'm thrilled with how it's all coming along. My friends Sam and Morgan invited me to go for a walk with them down by the river before the fitting and when they arrived at my house post walk they came in the door singing "Happy Birthday" to me and offering Chocolate Turtle Cheesecake! The cake was delicious and went divinely with the milk they brought along for it. After we had all enjoyed the tasties, it was time to lock ourselves away in my sewing room while Jim played his online game. What do you think?

That's a heck of a train huh? Sam was a trooper for rearranging the furniture with Morgan so that we could get a picture of almost all of that skirt.

It's so big I can hide a Morgan in it!

This week I'll actually get to start cutting and underlining my silk, which I am absolutely thrilled but slightly terrified about. The lace overbodice however is still a work in progress. We added a gusset under the arm so that I'll actually be able to hug people at my reception without shredding the dress, but that presented problems of it's own. The sleeve no longer went up high enough so we wound up just pinning extra fabric to the mockup to get an idea of what I'll actually need to do to it.

Clearly Westport and Riley were a huge help

Riley is such a little momma's boy and I love him for it. Now if I could only get him to stop shedding on everything in sight!

And now I think I'll go make myself a birthday cake. Triple Layer Lemon Cake with Lemon Curd and Lemon Cream Cheese Icing should do the trick.

Progress, finally!

One of the few friends I have here who knows anything about sewing came over this evening and brought another of our friends along with her to add to the collective creativeness and enthusiam for (drumroll please) A FITTING!

Disclaimer:

My wedding dress mockup, in this particular stage, is not nearly as nice looking as some of the others that I've seen around on PR as well as blogs. I've got an underbodice made out of old bedsheet, an over bodice made out of hot pink tulle (that was formerly a loofah costume for a friend) and the skirt from my aunt's wedding dress after I completely dismantled it. It's a work in progress!

This is what we've got so far. It will eventually be that wonderful lace off the shoulder look that I'm going for, but for now...

I do think I've finally figured out what I want to do with the skirt though. My inspiration gown has all these tucks and different fabrics and things, and I'm just not that interested. Besides, with the incredible texture that my silk has, I don't want to much going on. This is what we came up with. We've got a really nice, soft inverted pleat in the front, giving kind of that princess look. Smooth around the sides (where I definately don't need any extra) and then pleated in the back to make it look like I've actually got a toosh. Don't forget the huge train...that was a must in my opinion

There are plenty of alterations to make, but it's still progress. This is the first time I've had something even resembling a dress and not just the "bedsheet strapped to torso" look.

The back is going to V down so that the underbodice is just below bra band level and the over bodice will arch down in a slightly steeper angle (to give that wonderful slimming illusion) and that way I can close the dress up to the top edge of the underbodice with a zipper (lapped, I think, and then covered buttons over the top) and then the lace over bodice above that will be closed with just covered buttons. I really like that idea. I'll be covered yet still get to show a little skin...through lace.

Whatdya think?

As I write this, my dear, sweet Jim is toiling away over his new toy. Since he is now banned from the sewing room and will lose me for most evenings over the next few months, he's started painting and assembling his very first model car. He's pretty excited about it and I'm thrilled that he's got something to occupy him while I sew my life away.