Wedding Dresses

I started making wedding dresses when I got married in 2001. I've been sewing with my mom since I was five, and I knew my whole life that she and I would sew my wedding dress together. I love my dress for it's classic simplicity. It was based on a Vintage Vogue pattern from 1959, and we added a rhinestone inlaid "belt" around the waist, which unfortunately I don't have a good picture of!
But here I am with my bridesmaids, we also made all of their ensembles.

Since then, I've made four other wedding dresses. Here are two of them:

Beautiful Dayl & Jim

Beautiful Courtney

It seems that every two years or so, I get to make a wedding dress. It's fun to be creative and I love playing with beautiful textiles. But I really love that I get the honor of being involved in creating beautiful memories.

Cape!

My little neighbor friend just turned four, and he's super in to pirates & costumes right now. So I decided to make him a cape. Because every kid needs a cape, right?

Digging through my fabric box, I found this old Anne Klein striped shirt. I've held on to this shirt for so long, in hopes of using it for something. A kid's cape seems a little silly for such yummy silk chiffon, but seriously – I've had this shirt in the fabric box for years. It's way too big for me, and unwearable due to some unfortunately placed hot pink stains. Don't ask, I don't know where they came from! So I've given up on turning it into something that I can wear.
It seemed kind of Jack Sparrow-y to me, and it looks good with this brown taffeta.

 First I had to get rid of the sleeves, so I stitched from neck to the bottom of the side seam in as straight a line as possible. That chiffon is SQUIRRLY! It's a little puckery, too, because my needle wasn't fine enough for that delicate of fabric. If this wasn't for a four-year-old's costume, I would have taken the time to switch my needle. Oh well!

 Next I laid the de-sleeved blouse on the brown taffeta, and cut the shape of the cape out of the taffeta. This whole process would have been a lot easier if I wasn't trying to keep the collar. I thought the collar would be cool on the cape. Instead it's kinda weird, as you'll see below.

  I added some black double-faced satin ribbon to the top by the collar, so it could be used as ties. Folded the collar in, and carefully sewed it all together, leaving the bottom edge free.

 Turned right-side-out, here's the finished product:

 Brown shimmery manly taffeta on the outside, black & white stripes on the inside. Tied together with black ribbons straps. Unfortunately, the striped collar makes it look a bit like a Hogwarts wizard cape instead of pirate-y. But wouldn't a pirate be totally in to re-purposing an old shirt? I think so.
Here's my son modeling it in his jammies:

Wordless Wednesday: Spooooooky

Anna as Ladybug Girl, in front of our house (w/all our spooky décor):

Here are the neighbor kids, after chili & snacks, ready for trick-or-treating!

We had about 24 or so people over (haven't actually counted) for pre-trick-or-treating dinner. I love this neighborhood SO MUCH! I feel so blessed to have such great neighbors that we want to hang out with.