How to make a wedding dress - Part 4 - 1st Fitting

Katrin was in town for a family friend's bat mitzvah, so she and her mom and a friend came up to my tiny apartment to do the fitting. Normally when I do custom work, I test the pattern in muslin, but one of my other clients had coincidentally given me a few yards of the exact fabric that Katrin had indicated was her favorite among the swatches her mom had picked out at a store, so I figured I might as well use it. As is often the case, I wasn't able to get as much done as I had planned, and when they arrived, the dress was only half finished. I frantically sewed the lining to the outer part of the dress while they waited patiently. I didn't even have a chance to sew the zipper on her left side seam, so you can see the fabric awkwardly sticking out on the side, and that the bodice doesn't fit as neatly as it should a result.

Nevertheless, for the most part, the garment fit her very well. She didn't like the amount of volume at the waist so we decided to take the gathers out of the skirt and the lining. I also didn't have a chance to sew on the overskirt you might recall in the sketch and drape that will be in the finished garment, but we played around with using the tulle that was for the overskirt as a veil, which you can see in the photos below - a sneak peek at the work in progress.

If you look closely you can see the tucks in the skirt (sorry, I really need to get a nicer camera), which I sewed by hand.

Katrin pretending to paint the painting on my wall.

The straps were a little too loose as well (if you look closely you can see where I've pinned them on her left shoulder) so those needed to be taken up about an inch on each side, and we decided to add tucks on the top tulle layer on the underskirt, which is tan (which you can't really see in my iPhone photos), so the peach one underneath could be seen. Katrin and her mother really happy with it, so I was happy and relieved. I am going to make the adjustments we discussed before our next fitting in June. You can't see the detail in the fabric either, which has this wrinkled look to it. Hopefully for June I will be able to get my photographer friend Ferris to take better shots of the dress.

On a side note, I was able to achieve the vintage effect on the photos using this Photoshop tutorial.