Bridesmaid Dress

It’s so strange to think that my big brother’s getting married. Mostly because, no matter how old he gets, my mental image of him will always include a buzz cut, braces, and an M.C. Escher t-shirt.

Just as, I’m sure, the picture he will always conjure when thinking of me will involve a black front tooth (long story–thankfully a baby tooth I no longer have), a dogged determination in my eye to get him to give me the front seat, and probably wearing ballet clothes at an inappropriate time.

Such is the life of siblings. I couldn’t be happier about his wedding in two months, and come that big day it will just have to sink in that he’s decades older than my mental picture. And at the same time, I hope to bear proof that I have advanced beyond the years of  wearing a shimmery leotard with matching leggings to school, of deciding to Nair my father’s back on a family vacation, of walking across the back of the sofa as though it were a tightrope (there’s your black tooth story right there).

This is where the bridesmaid dress comes in (Butterick 5385, only I gave it an A-line skirt to suit my airy fabric). Making it myself was somehow a way of saying that I’d grown up, too. As if those two things could be on par–Look, brother, you’ve found the person you want to spend the rest of your life with, but I can make a nice dress!

Nevertheless, all it needs now is to be hemmed (no small feat, considering there are three layers of skirt).

Oh, and it’d be nice if I could figure out a way to make that curved seam where the front skirt meets the front midriff not to collapse. (What do you think’s the solution? Sew some bias tape on the seam to give it some oomph?) I don’t have this problem in the mock-up I made in chambray. It’s my fabric choice that makes the top curve of the skirt fall in on itself.

But oh, how happy am I with the fabric choice despite? You see, I took the $2/yard cotton lawn from the warehouse store, used that for the outer and lining, and then interlined the dress with the $2/yard silk something-or-other (georgette maybe?). This was a thoroughly hare-brained idea, of course, because whatever type of silk the interlining is, it shifts around like crazy and is an absolute bear to deal with. I wish I’d used this tip, about pinning the outer piece to the interlining before cutting.

But even though I hadn’t read that yet, I did get my possibly-georgette to cooperate enough. And now it lends such nice body to the pleats and such a pleasant drape to the dress overall. Wearing this just feels good.

Which feels all the better because there were a couple of other issues in the making of this dress besides just the slippery interlining. I’ll get into those in a later post. But the point is that despite moments of doubt during construction, somehow I came away with something I’ll be very happy to wear.

Something that will let me fade appropriately into the wildflower-themed background while my big brother–who unknowlingly influenced me to read voraciously, take Latin, and even go to the same college he did–ties the knot.