Making Wedding Dress Pt. 10 – Hemming and Attaching Pearls and Rhinestones

Hello everyone! Hope you had a wonderful weekend. Mine was nice – Andy, Kiko and I went to Enoshima, which is a small island near Fujisawa, Kanagawa. They have a plenty of Japanesey cute shops, souvenir shops and of course a beach. The weather was super nice, sunny and crispy (not muggy like an average Japan summer day). After our family excursion, I went to get my hair done:) I was going to cut my bangs short and straight, but I decided against it – I’ve had my bangs long for so long, I don’t have the courage to change it dramatically.

Anyway, here is my progress on my friend’s wedding dress. I finished the skirt lining and installing the zipper (successfully) last time. At this point, I hemmed the skirt. There is a very nice item called horse hair braid to hem skirt like this. This was my first time using horse hair braid, and what a clever item it is! I bought this at Okadaya in Shinjuku, and I think it was about 250 yen per meter. If you are in the States, I know Sunni from A Fashionable Stitch has horse hair braids stocked in her shop for a very reasonable price ($1.60 per yard).  This item is great for hemming both circle skirt and half circle skirt.

So, I attached the horse hair braid to the hem, and then realized that I had made a crucial mistake – I did not underline the skirt, and I really should have. I wish I underlined the skirt with silk organza, so when I hand sew the end of horse hair braid onto the dress, I will be able take the stitches from the organza itself, not the fashion fabric. It was really nerve-wrecking to try to scoop a stitch from the back of the fashion fabric without a stitch showing on the right side of the fabric. Lesson learned for next time…

Before attaching the upper body lining, I hand sewed the lace, pearls and rhinestones. It took FOREVER! This dress took so much more hand sewing than I expected. I carefully hand sewed each pearl and rhinestone individually. I did this by tying the string and cutting it for each individual piece. I did this because I did not want to have all the pearls/rhinestones attached to one string thereby opening myself up to a possible domino effect where one pearl gets detached from the dress and causes all the others to disconnect from the dress. I think I watched 4-5 episodes of project runway while doing this. I often stopped to see the balance of the pearls and rhinestones!

It took time, but I am very happy with the result:

What do you think?! I’m almost done!!

P.S. I’m guest blogging at Jo’s blog,  A Bit Of This and a Bit Of That today, sharing a tutorial on how to make a headband! Check it out here.

Read my progress on sewing wedding dress! :

Part 1 – Fabric shopping
Part 2 – Muslin
Part 3 – Another Muslin
Part 4 – Cutting Fashion Fabric
Part 5 – Sewing the Bust Part
Part 6 – Ruching
Part 7 – Skirt Part
Part 8 – Install a Zipper & Bones
Part 9 – Skirt Lining, Another Attempt to Install Zipper and More Supplies