Whitney's Garter

When I started to pull out the supplies for Whitney's garter, I was remembering my mistakes on making Megan's garter. Too much length, too much fluff. I wasn't going to go there again. I was going to make the same design but just downsize it.

The schiffli lace was purchased off of Ebay several months ago. Sadly, you can't find anything like this around here unless it's nylon and I refuse to buy that. The lace is maybe six inches wide. I decide to cut off one inch of the netting then I gather up the lace to make a flounce. The second part of the garter is to make something interesting in the middle. Like Megan's, I took a piece of lace and gathered it into a posey shape. And like Megan's it was totally wrong. Even with the downsizing, it still was too over the top. So like Megan's, I had to dismantle what I did and made the garter simpler.

I had some left over trim from the gown and cut a little motiff out. I purchased two Claddagh charms, one for Megan and one for Whitney. I then went to Blue Nile and purchased two charm bracelets. The charms were stitched down with colored thread so it could be easily removed and added to the charm bracelets.

I need to figure out a design before the next round of brides come my way.

The Curious Case of Megan's Garter

Taylor and I were invited to a bridal shower last week. Taylor will be standing up as one of the bridesmaids. When I can, I try to make the bride a garter. I have been making bridal garters for about 30 years now. You'd think that I would have a better handle on them by now.

I suppose that part of my problem is the lace. The lace that is available in my town comes from Hobby Lobby, Joann's and Hancock Fabrics. Have you looked at this stuff lately? Very plasticky. I have a container of assorted laces. However, my bridal laces are dwindling. I was hoping to score some schiffli lace when I was at Mary Jo's in North Carolina. Unfortunately, they didn't have what I was looking for. What I want is about a 4 inch schiffli lace flounce. It can be flat trim lace. I can deal with that and gather it myself. I want my bridal garters to have a romantic, somewhat Victorian look to them. I don't want them to look like they were purchased in Vegas at a show girl convention. I'm lucky that I do have some nice 3 inch chantilly lace but I guess I still prefer schiffli. It is a delicate Swiss lace. Have I ever mentioned that I'm part Swiss? Maybe that is why I have an affinity to this lace.

There are two regions in the world that were powerhouses in lace manufacturing. One being St. Gallen, Switzerland where my mother's ancestors are from. The second area is Northern New Jersey. I can only guess that these textile areas have been affected by the economy and goods being produced in the Orient. I can remember over 20 years ago when the bridal gown companies started to use lace from the Orient. It was then called "Oriental" lace. The name sounded kind of exotic. I would think that that term isn't used any more. It's not exotic lace, at least not anymore. True beautiful laces come from the Swiss, the French, the English and America. I know that these laces are very expensive, but can I have a choice please? Oh my, it looks like I've hijacked my own post and gotten on my soap box. I better step down!

As Megan's shower was approaching, I was getting fearful that I would have to make a boring garter, at least by my definition of boring. I found a beautiful site for lace. What they had was perfect. However, it was located in Australia. That wasn't going to work. So here I sat, majorly worried that I wasn't going to find anything. Then I hit Ebay. I ended up scoring some 6 inch trim Schiffli lace. The lace is longer than I wanted but I thought I could work with it.

A couple of days before the shower, I dyed the lace and the silk ribbon in a tea bath. The tea dyeing only took about 30-60 seconds. So armed with all my laces and ribbons, I started to put the garter together the night before the shower. Usually what happens when I'm working with lace, I take out anything that will remotely work. So on my living room sofa, I had different ribbons and laces to audition. I wanted a little bit of color in the garter, not just a plain ivory. My goal was to use silk ribbon embroidery in a muted purple. The bridesmaid dresses are a dark purple but I didn't want to go that dark for the garter. So I was lucky enough to have a great purple in my ribbon stash. I snipped a little medallion off of some Venice lace that I had. This would be my base for the silk ribbon embroidery. I wish the medallion would have been a tad larger but it worked ok I guess.

This garter was constructed and designed similarly to past garters that I had made. The difference being the size of the lace. The flounce was a couple of inches wider than normal and I think the little lace "posy" was about an 1/2 to 1 inch wider than normal. So what resulted was an over-the-top, cupcake, kind of garter. Taylor didn't like the flounce. I didn't like the lace posy thing on the top. And Jeff, well, he is expanding his sense of fashion flair. He loved it. He didn't want me to touch it. Taylor wanted me to take off the ruffle. That wasn't going to happen. You see, I decided to opt for real silk ribbon. It is strong, yet delicate. The silk did not like going over the feed dogs. I knew that if I took this garter apart, the silk ribbon wouldn't look the same.

I decide to go to bed and think about the problem and how am I going to fix it. The next morning after a large pot of coffee, I decided I had no choice but to deconstruct the garter. So I started to clip the threads, one layer at a time. I then put the bows and silk ribbon embroidery back on. As I look at the photo from the cupcake version, it doesn't look too bad. But trust me, in real life, it was so over done.

Lessons learned. Too much of a good thing is usually not a good thing. The lace netting at the top of the trim should have been trimmed at least 1-2 inches. I probably won't make to many garters out of silk ribbon anymore. Yes, the ribbon has such a glorious feel to it. But once the ribbon is gathered and bunched up, can you really feel the difference? A polyester satin ribbon might be a better choice for the heavy treatment that it takes to put the garter together.

Bonjour! Je m'appelle Gigi.

I'm new to the neighborhood. When I signed up for this gig, I knew that it wasn't Paris, but come on. There's no great architecture. No boutiques. No sidewalk cafes. No men. Mon Dieu! I didn't know that I would be so lonely. Do you know that the girls at Dior have their own room? Yes, a room just for models. I can only wish. I have to share space in the atelier flou. Kind of hard to relax with all that fabric taking up space and the machines humming. There's no room to sit.

You will have to excuse my hokey undergarments. I'm kind of embarrassed about them. The gals over at Project Runway have expensive undergarments. Why can't I have designer lingerie like they have? I can just hear my parental unit now saying "If the other girls were jumping off the Oneida Street bridge, would you do it also?" Oh well. I've been told that there are good things to come. That is the important thing about a model. It's how I show and sell the garment. It's not about what I'm wearing underneath. I'm anxious to get this show on the road. I can't wait to see what I'll be modeling. I hope you're in the front row. By the way, is there a chocolat shop around here? I simply adore chocolat.

À bientôt.

Gigi

Adjusting a Dress Form

I spent considerable time researching and deciding what would be the best option for a dress form for the bridal gown. I so, so wanted a professional dress form but realistically, the cost was too high. The professional models will start around $450.00. One of the big benefits would be that draping and pinning would be easier. The model would be heavier and sturdier. The downside is that it's a one size only so with all three girls being different sizes and heights, I wouldn't be able to use a pro model for the other two girls. So after much debating, I decided to go with My Double Deluxe by Dritz in a small size.

What I decided to do it to adjust the dress form to be a couple of inches smaller in size than Whitney. I then took quilt batting to increase the size to her measurements. The human body is not hard like the hard plastic shell of the dress form. So I wanted the form to be a little soft to mimic the body. I also needed to be able to pin on the form. I'm hoping that this helps.

My friend Donna suggested that I use blue painters tape to close up the gap in the dress form. The only thing that isn't quite right is the shoulder to waist measurement. The dress form separates at the waist but I don't think that I can increase this, at least I haven't figured that out. Luckily, we are not too far off. Whitney said it creeps her out to see the form wearing her bra!

OMG! I Have It In My Hot Little Hands

What could I possibly be so excited about? This may bore most of you, in fact, probably all of you but I'm crazy excited. A few years ago, I checked out a book in our local library on bridal couture. It's a great book. I put this on my "to buy" list for the future. Well with Whitney's engagement, the time had come to purchase this book. The book is from Susan Khalje and it is called Bridal Couture: Fine Sewing Techniques for Wedding Gowns and Evening Wear. I went to my go to site, Amazon. I thought that I was misreading the price, $140.00! I went to Ebay and indeed the starting price for the book was at least $75.00. I was dumbfounded. I really, really wanted that book. Plan B would be to check the book out of the library about 20 times while the Whit's bridal gown is being constructed. Not my first choice.

For over a week, I would check Ebay and Amazon. There is also a sewing want-ads group on Yahoo that I was checking. The cheapest price was still double. That was another option to pay maybe $60 for a used copy. Mind you, this is a paperback book with a retail price of $29.95. The German in me was having a hard time with the mark-up but realizing that the book is now out of print and I didn't have a lot of options. I kept searching with the author's name to see if some little obscure fabric shop had it in their store. After one week of searching, no such luck. Finally, one night I just kept advancing the search button. I can't tell you how many pages into my search I finally found not 1 but 2 places that had the book. Man, I ran as fast as I could to get my credit card. My husband saw the order sheet up on the computer and he quickly said "NOW WHAT ARE YOU BUYING?" I'm using the caps because he did indeed raise his voice. He said that I had a record this month for fabric, patterns, books, etc using PayPal and my credit card. Well it only made sense to explain what a tremendous deal I had found and I just saved him about $110 on the book. This was one of the few times that he didn't roll his eyes and say "yeah, right".

The intellectual side of me said to not get too excited. I looked for the websites copyright date. Hmmm, 2009. Still in business, so far so good. I plugged in my information and waited for a confirmation. I held my breath for about 24 hours until I received notice that my new prized possession was finally shipped out. Last night, the UPS man finally delivered my book. The shop took such care in shipping it. It was neatly wrapped in tissue paper, kind of like a fragile bridal gift. I left out the important parts. I found the book at equilter.com. Who would have thought that an online quilt store would have a resource book like that. I'm eternally grateful though. Of course I had to quickly scan the fabric section of the site but decided that I better not press my luck with my husband working in the same room. The other retailer that I found my book at was Baltazar's in New Orleans. Baltazar's used to have a brick and morter store in New Orleans. They now are only an online retailer. With the times that I have travelled to New Orleans, I always put a trip to Baltazar's on my "next time" list. I blew it there. At least, the specialty items are available online.

This book is a must for anyone who is interested in improving their couture techniques. I am an average home sewer. I don't have any grandiose ideas that Whit's bridal gown will be worthy of couture status but I think I can improve my skills and create a gown that does not look like it came out of mom's sewing room. The book breaks down the construction of the gown, making a muslin, the bodice, the skirt, putting the components together, working with lace, etc.

The other really cool resource book that I added to my library is Fabric Savvy by Sandra Betzina. This book has always been highly recommended. Sandra is an idol of countless seamstresses and home sewers. The reason why this book is a must-have is that it devotes 2 pages to maybe 80 different fabrics. It recommends finishing techniques, presser feet, needles, thread, etc. for that particular fabric. I was in Beaver Dam taking a smocking class and when that was over, I decided to stop by the Wal-Mart store that is near by. As I pulled up to Wal-Mart, I spied a Goodwill store in the back of Wal-Mart. The past couple stops at thrift stores proved fruitless in my hunt for vintage patterns. I walked around the store looking for patterns. I asked the lady at the counter. She said they either throw them away or used them as wrapping paper. Does that ever make my heart sad. I went to the book section and quickly scanned the area. Scored the Fabric Savvy for $2.99. All-in-all, a good day.