Wedding Day Dresses

Top - prior to quilting

To make this fiber art piece I used my standard technique of doing a small scale drawing, enlarging it to full size and then using the full size drawing to make pattern templates.  I made templates for the two dresses from the full size drawing. I wanted to use vintage fabrics as much as I could, so I pulled out my stash of inherited fabrics.

I had a nice piece of lace that was very suitable for the bride’s dress.  I had plenty of it too, so I could make the skirt wide and put some folds in it to give a feeling of fullness. I under-laid the lace with a solid white fabric from the bodice down. That is how the actual bridal gown was made. The arms and upper torso were sheer lace.

I modified a vintage piece of  pale blue-green fabric to create the “Mother of the Bride” dress. This blue green fabric was inherited from my Mother’s stash, and it was a solid.  I decided I wanted a little bit more variation in that fabric, and I was looking for something that would read like a blue-green print fabric.  To accomplish this I pulled out a roll of lace and cut about 4-30 inch lengths of it. I then sewed these to each other lengthwise. This approximately 30” x 20” section of lace became my stamping template for the fabric. I over-laid the lace section on the blue green fabric and then stamped on it with fabric paint.  The paint went through the holes in the lace pattern and created a variable surface design. I thought it looked much better than the solid and I was happy with the result.

I know I could have purchased a fabric instead, but I wanted to use my inherited fabrics for this and thought it was worth the effort.  Here are some photos of the process and results.

lace template on fabric, painting in progress

A section of fabric after painting

dress on background fabric

 

close up of dress