Last week's work was challenging to say the least!

So last week was interesting to say the least!  I had a bride come with some dresses that were made overseas, custom was the word that was used, she had to send her measurements to the designer, choose the design for the bead work which was beyond beautiful and the dresses would be made for her and sent here.  Imagine this bride who lives in New York came to Barrie, her childhood home, to get married in Toronto.  The groom's side is from Alberta and they are all meeting in Ontario for the wedding, a lot of moving parts.....

So the bride receives the dresses and to her disappointment the main reception dress is waaaayyyyy tooo big and way too long!  Even with very high heels it was dragging on the floor at least 20 cm!  All the bead work and embroidery on silk georgette made it impossible to hem the dress, the only solution was to make a crinoline to raise up the hem so I did and it worked somewhat, the weight of the dress proved too much even for the re-enforced hem with very stiff interfacing AND boning around the hemline plus two double layers of stiff netting! 

I took the dress up at the shoulders at least 5 cm on each side which helped a bit on two counts: raise the hem and shrink the armhole which itself was way too big.  The sides at the underarm needed to be taken in as well again 4 cm on each side meaning the sleeves had to be completely removed, taken in and then replaced! What a job to remove all the serging and stitching without damaging the fabric. 

Then there was the bustle, this dress weighs at least 40 lbs, the fabric is very fine and would not hold up the weight of the dress on it's own so I used the under layer to help in holding the bustle in place.  Check out the pix

The other dress for the ceremony came in and it was TOO SHORT at the front!  The rest fit OK but it was cut at such an odd angle that it could not be fixed so the bride went shopping for another dress for the ceremony, something modest with sleeves.....  Good luck with that!  Well she managed to find something with sleeves but a completely open back that would not be appropriate for her ceremony.  So Maria to the rescue!  Take a look at the before and after pix to see what had to be done to this lovely dress!  In the end it turned out absolutely stunning and was very elegant, fit like a glove! 

There were 2 other outfits that needed alterations but they were minor by comparison and the mom's dress that is shown in the gallery as well.  It took a total of 27.5 hours to get the job done but in the end everyone was happy which is what counts!