The Bridal Veil

Is there anything more that signals bride than a veil? You can put a woman in a bridal gown but a mother may not shed a tear until the veil is put upon the bride. That is the crowning touch in the bridal ensemble. The veil makes the bride.

Bridal veils have a long and varied history. Veils in times past were used to protect the bride from evil spirits. In arranged marriages, the bride was veiled and the groom did not see his bride until after the ceremony. In some cultures, the veil is used to shield the bride from other men who may make an attempt to steal the bride. In modern times, the veil is used to accent the bridal gown.

If any of you have gone bridal gown shopping, you know that veils can start anywhere from $50 to over $1000. The amount of lace, quality of the lace and the length of the veil will determine the cost. You can also save yourself hundreds of dollars by making the veil yourself. A couple of weeks ago, I posted the week of edging experimentation. Today, I'm just going to show you the final result. I took roughly 130 inches of bridal tulle. The width of the tulle is 108 inches. I cut the tulle into an oval. You could certainly have more of a rectangular edge. I then took 25 inches in the middle of one edge and gathered that. I handstitched the gathers onto a metal comb. I purchased the comb from Lacis.com. The gathering and handstitching came after the pencil edge finsh. Here is the finished result.

The Edge

The past couple of weeks I've been experimenting with different edge finishes for the bridal gown. The great thing about a bridal veil is that you can do almost anything, simple or elaborate and it looks like a veil. Whitney had toyed with several options. We thought we were going to make an alencon lace-trimmed mantilla. As the clock ticked, I opted not to do it. Did I really need a project with more lace to stitch down? If the gown required it, certainly I would have placed an order for more lace. Whitney finally decided that with all the lace on the gown, she wanted to keep the veil simple.

So the experimenting began. I took scraps of veiling to both the sewing machine and the serger. I used different threads and different sewing techniques. I tried gold and silver metallics, plain thread, thread over rattail, thread over gimp. I tried a zig zag stitch, 3 thread overlock, 4 thread overlock, a rolled edge. I tried an the overlock stitches with zigzagging on top. I even tried a double row of serging. That was a neat effect but didn't think Whitney would like it.

The use of the gimp made the edge stiff plus it really didn't show up very well, even with a metallic thread. The rat tail was way too thick. Not the look we wanted. It certainly would work for some brides. I really, really wanted to get the silver metallic on the veil but it was not to be. My serger did not like the thread. Too bad, I spent $15.00 for that one spool of thread. There will be other projects for that though.

The winner was using a rolled edge on the serger with white polyester embroidery thread. I felt the embroidery thread gave the edge a little more umphhh than plain serger thread. Whitney loves it. I'll show pictures of the veil later.