Leaves. Lots of leaves. Arranged around the hem and cascading down the dress. The perfect dress for a fall outdoor wedding.
The fabric is a cream silk crepe with a white silk gauze overlay. I was a little nervous at first about the dissimilar colors, until I did this little test.The texture and contrast is just lovely.
To make 2-300 leaves traditional methods wasn't going cut it. After seeing an electronic cutter that was way waaaaaay too involved to make this many, I discovered via a class at Costume College that some paper cutting machines can do fabric as well. They use dies rather than a printer style cutter with razors.
The Sizzix die cutting machine I bought can do up to 8 layers of fabric at a time. Cutting (err, tearing) my fabric 6" wide and running it through with this die cutter lets me make 7 of the oak leaves at a time, or 21 leaves if you include all 3 styles on this die.
It's pretty easy to use, you fold the fabric end over end neatly on the die, like this. You don't have to be exact.
You then crank it through the machine like this, sandwiched between two pieces of acrylic. The die is covered in foam rubber, and all you're really doing is squishing the die onto a piece of acrylic and cutting what ever is in between them.
It does leave the occasional individual threads connected that need to be snipped, which far longer than anything else. I can make 150 leaves in about 2 hours if you include the snipping, only 50 which will be used on the dress. The rest will be used on other wedding decorations, even the scraps. Good TV watching (listening) work. If I was doing fewer layers I'd have less trimming.
So far I've made about 150 oak leaves, with 50 to go. When you include the extra two leaves I've made 450 so far. They do fray a bit along certain angles but it hasn't been a problem so far.
Onto the skirt. This has been way harder than I thought. Am so used to period cuts, where I basically have the decision made for me. First I did 3 gore test, but it wasn't full enough at the hem.
See how it pulls instead of drapes where it's pinned to the ironing board? So I added a fabric width straight panel to the back.
Cotton isn't silk, so it was time to see how the fabric actually performed. I played around fabric itself, seeing how the silk would flow with a straight width panel in the front.
The silk has so soft a drape there isn't any poofiness from it. There is no spring. Which is what I'd not been liking in my cotton mockup.
So I'm conflicted. Most of skirt images my sister sent me had gathers are the waist, but she's not crazy about the look in this image. She also likes stuff that is more fitted over the hips with a wide, drapey hem. She isn't a seamstress and doesn't always understand the huge difference in cut between otherwise very similar dresses. And how different a test like this looks than the final gown.
Am thinking I need to construct the skirt as a straight skirt, knowing I may need to re-cut if she hates it. Always easier to cut down.
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