The Dress of Blessings

Once upon a time (in the early 80's), there was a wedding dress.  It was lacey and gorgeous, with just a subtle hint of pearls and sequins.

 My Aunt Jessie gave me her wedding dress so I could use it to make a blessing dress for Numero Tres.  I was in awe at the gift.  Suddenly, I also felt a lot of pressure.  What if I didn't have time?  What if I started and never finished?  Or worst of all, what if I butchered it?

I finally got the courage to start.  I took pictures all along the way, so I thought I'd turn this into a kind of tutorial for someone else who might want to do the same thing.  I think if you click on the pictures you can see them up close.  Be advised, though, that I have no formal sewing training.  I'm pretty much self-taught.  I don't know all the awesome techniques and vocabulary.  But it turned out well anyway, as you'll see.

 Step One: Plan.  A lot.

Seriously, I spent WEEKS thinking and thinking about what I was going to do.  I hung the dress from the ceiling in the guest room and just walked in to stare at it for about 4 days.  Then, one day during Vander's nap, I spent the entire two hours playing with the dress and the pattern I used to make Annalee's blessing dress.  And still I didn't cut it.

But as I thought and played around, an idea came to me.  I'd originally planned to just use the dress as raw material to cut out the pattern pieces.  But what if I preserved the waist and just turned the gown into a mini version of itself?  Could it work?

More thinking.

I had to account for things that the pattern accounted for (like seam allowances) and then subtract them from my plans.  You can see here how I have lined up the zipper with the center of the pattern, not the edge.  I soon grew confident that I would be able to do it.

 So I prayed.  And then I cut.

There were many scary moments making this dress.  This was the first one.  I was using SCISSORS to CUT the gorgeous dress!  But it had to be done to make things more manageable.  The train was forever long!  (I don't know why I didn't get a picture of that.)  I cut off the sheer lace sleeves and most of the skirt.  Now it looked like a dress for Annalee.

 I actually prayed during every step of making this dress.  I was so scared of committing some unfixable error that I knew I had to have God's help with this.  Scary part #2: drawing on the dress.  I knew it was just a fabric pen but what I didn't know is if I'd be able to wash it out.  Was this fabric washable?  Oh well, no where to go but forward!  I laid out the bodice pattern piece with the bottom of the pattern hanging 5/8" past the waist (got to remember those seam allowances we're not using!)

 Pray.  Cut.  Gasp!  Scary!

You'll see I had to put pins all around the bodice to hold the lace to satin underneath.

When I was laying out pattern pieces I discovered that the waist of the dress was only ONE INCH wider than the pattern on either side.  Is that crazy?!  My aunt was quite the svelte bride!  I was very excited to discover this, for reasons I'll show you later.

 I laid out the back bodice pattern on the back of the dress with the bottom 5/8" below the waist again.  And that's when I encountered my first real moment of terror.

I hadn't noticed that the waist on the back of the dress was several inches lower down than the waist on the front of the dress.  I spent a good amount of time adjusting the pattern up and down to try to get it to fit with the front.  Finally I prayed and cut.

 Then I sewed the shoulder and side seams together.  This is the part where I was so excited that my aunt was skinny.  Instead of having to cut 6 inches (or whatever) off the whole side of the dress, I could just kind of taper the side from the ribs down to the waist and then I didn't have to sew yards of skirt!  The skirt has three layers of fabric: sheer, tulle, and satin.  At the waist they are attached to each other, but on the way down the skirt they separate into three layers.  Just thinking of the job of trying to sew them all individually and then meld them together at the top gave me a stupor of thought.  But this way I got to keep all the lovely fullness of the skirt and save myself some work!  I mostly eye-balled it.

 It didn't turn out too bad.  You can see here what I mean about the back waist being lower than the front.  Fortunately, unless you hold the dress just like this you can't even see how they don't match up perfectly because the big, beautiful skirt covers it up!

 So now I had something that was starting to look like a dress.  Next on the list: sleeves!

When I pulled out the sleeve pattern I was suddenly struck by how the bell curve of the pattern looked an awful lot like the lace applique that was sewn all around the bottom of the train and the veil.  I figured that lace over satin would look great.

 I decided to save myself some work by using satin from the bottom of the dress, where it was already hemmed.  Of course, I had more work, in a way, cutting out 4 pieces instead of two and making sure the lace lined up just so with the ends swooping out over the satin hem.

 Ever wonder why baby clothes cost way more than adult clothes that have more fabric?  This is why.  Evil sleeves.  It is spectacularly frustrating to try to sew these tiny things on a regular sewing machine!

The pattern said to baste 5/8 inches out and then 1/4 inch in from that so I could gather the sleeves.  When I baste sleeves, though, I like to do them at 1/2 and 1/4 inches instead, so there is no chance of my basting showing through when I put in the final 5/8 inch seam.  I hate picking stuff out!

 I had to think a lot about the neckline.  The pattern I was using had a collar, like you can see on Annalee's dress.  These collars are perfect for catching spit-up and drool and making children look like they have no necks.  It wasn't a look I thought went with this dress.  So I decided to put the collar on the inside.  I used the pattern as a guide, but instead of cutting out 4 separate pieces of satin I cut out two with a fold in the middle.

 With same sides together I sewed the outer edges together and turned it right side out.  Then I pinned the neckline part to the right side of the neck of the dress and sewed a 3/8" seam.

 I folded the fabric to the inside.  I'd been planning to sew a seam around the top of the neck to keep the fabric down, but I suddenly realized that was a stupid, ugly idea.

 Instead, I used a needle and thread to hand stitch the collar down in a few places.  I made sure to only put stitches in places where the lace pattern was thick.  They were invisible!

(The sleeves were attached right after this.  I did one and then had to take several days to recover before I did the next one.)

 The most daunting part of this dress was the hem.  I'd never hemmed sheer fabric before.  Even the maker of the wedding dress had gotten out of it by attaching the lace applique all around the bottom to hide the fact that the sheer fabric wasn't hemmed.  But I decided that the large applique would overpower the baby dress.  I did a lot of research and praying on this one.  Finally, I went with a rolled hem.  I watched a few tutorials on YouTube and then I went for it.

Just as I was about to start, I discovered that on the back of the dress where the lace ran all the way down the train, the tulle and the sheer fabric were sewn together!  That threw a wrench in my plans of continuing the three separate layers.  I didn't see how I could start out with two hems in the front and meld them into one in the back.  So I had to pin the tulle and sheer together and make them one layer.  First, I sewed a line 1/4" all around.  I think I was supposed to do a 1/8" line, but my presser foot is 1/4" wide and that was easiest for me.  Next, I used scissors to trim off half of the fabric.  Then, I rolled the increasingly-microscopic seam under and pinned it.  Gah!  It took forever!  I started sewing around the hem--you'll just have to watch the YouTube tutorials if you want more specifics on that--when suddenly my machine started freaking out.  Every time I'd get to a thicker part of the hem, like the lace, the needle thread would wind around the needle while it was below the plate and then it would come up with three threads instead of one.  Then the thread would break.  It happened over and over.  I threaded my needle again and again.  I read the owner's manual for my machine.  I tried adjusting pressure and tension, to no avail.  Finally, I started crying.  What in the world was wrong?  And how could my machine break when I was so close to being done?  (And so close to delivering the baby?)  I tried to look up the answer online in the troubleshooting guides I found, but since I didn't know the real terms for what was happening I didn't know what I was looking for.  In despair, I posted my problem on Facebook, hoping one of my friends might have a suggestion.  Then I went to bed.

My friends suggested I replace the bobbin and rethread the entire machine.  I had to laugh at that.  It reminded me of when we call my brother Steven with computer problems and he asks, "Did you restart the computer?"  So I "restarted" my sewing machine.  Of course, it was made in the early 80's and isn't programmable, but we're speaking metaphorically here.  As I was replacing everything, I discovered that my needle was ever so slightly bent.  Ahhhhhhh.

Confession time:  I know you are not supposed to sew over the pins.  You are supposed to take them out as you go, before you sew over them.  However, when I don't take them out my needle goes unbroken/unbent 99% of the time and my project gets done faster.  But it looks like this fabric was just determined to ruin my statistics.  After replacing my needle things were back to normal.  I took the pins out for a while, but it slowed me down so much (and there were YARDS of fabric in this skirt) that I soon got lazy and started sewing over the pins.  And I hit one.  And my needle bent again.  Humbly, I replaced my needle again and took out the pins from then on.

 The last step was to hem the satin.  I was feeling really lazy by this point so I sewed the 1/4" but didn't trim it before I rolled and sewed it.  That gave me a thicker hem for the lining, but I don't think it looks bad.  Aren't my hems lovely?

 Ta-da!

All done!  A beautiful blessing dress, a miniature version of my aunt's gorgeous gown.  I got to keep the lovely waist, the elegant bow, and the extremely useful zipper.  (I just hate buttons on baby clothes!)

I finished just after midnight last night.  When I was done I woke Nathan up to tell him.  He mumbled something nice, the dear.  Then I burst into tears.  I was just in awe of what I had accomplished.  I couldn't believe it really looked as good as it does.  There were so many times when I worried that it was going to look like a freak show.  I have never been someone who is good with thinking out spatial things, like architecture or sculpture or clothing patterns.  I can follow directions, but to plan out the construction of something 3D?  Not my area of expertise.  But it turns out that when I really applied myself to it (and when I prayed a ton) I developed a talent in this area!  Pretty cool!  I seriously could not have done this without Heavenly Father's help.

I also cried because I was so relieved that I'd gotten it done before the baby was born.  True, the baby blessing won't be until August, but I know that I won't have time or energy for big projects when I'm recovering from surgery and going through the new-parent-zombie phase.  Also, we're having newborn pictures taken next week and I wanted the dress ready for that!

You may have noticed in the first picture that some parts of the dress had yellowed with age.  I considered soaking the dress in OxyClean to bring it back to whiteness.  On my test run with some fabric scraps I discovered that OxyClean does, in fact, turn the fabric a brilliant, beautiful white.  Unfortunately, it also dissolves the glue used to apply the sequins on the applique.  The sequins are clear and subtle, but not when the glue turns a gummy white.  Fortunately, the worst yellowing was not included in the dress anyway, so right now it is a beautiful antique white, as I like to call it.  I think I'll leave it that way, unless we have a spit-up or pooplosion episode.  In that case, I will wash the dress and cover the few spots where the glue is with some pearls.  The original dress had pearls on it, so I think it will look great.

Well, there ya go!  I hope my experience helps someone else who might be considering turning an adult dress into a special dress for a little girl!