Planning your wedding can be quite challenging and time consuming, so much so that you could whiz through it without actually enjoying the process that leads up to that very important day in your life.
Take for example, buying a short wedding dress. A lot of brides are very eager to find the dress of their dreams but very few actually know what happens behind the scenes once they have purchased their dream short wedding dress. With this in mind, we decided to create a series of detailed videos of how we make short wedding dresses.
There are several lengthy steps involved in making a short wedding dress. Every designer has their own way of working but generally we stick to these steps.
1. Creating a block pattern
2. Making the pattern
3. Cutting out the pattern
4. Cutting the dress
5. Sewing and Overlocking the dress
6. Hand sewing, trimming and embellishments
I chose to film the making of one of my most popular wedding dresses, The Illusion Short Wedding Dress.
The Illusion Short wedding dress is made from a silk duchess satin and contrasted with a Fortuny inspired brocade I designed a few years ago.
The Tobi Hannah Illusion Short Wedding Dress © Garazi Gardner
It has a boat neckline and a double tiered pleated skirt. This short wedding dress is inspired by 1960s style and elegance. We had a lot of fun filming this and I'm sure you'll find it fascinating.
Here's how we made the dress.
Part One: Cutting out the pattern
A pattern is a paper or cardboard template from which the parts of the dress are pinned onto fabric before cutting out and assembling. We had already made a block pattern and so the video below starts with cutting out the pattern. Each individual pattern piece is labelled to make the sewing process easier. The Illusion Short Wedding dress has 13 pattern pieces.
Watch the video below to see how a pattern is cut out.
© Tobi Hannah
Part Two: Pinning the pattern onto fabric
In part one we cut out all the pattern pieces from paper. Once this is complete, the next step is to pin the pieces onto fabric in preparation for cutting. This is a very crucial step and must be done with extreme patience and care as improper procedures could lead to fit and sizing problems.
Watch the video below to see how pinning is done.
© Tobi Hannah
Part Three: Cutting the dress
After pinning the pattern on to fabric as you saw in part two, the process continues with cutting the dress out of fabric. There are 33 fabric pieces that are sewn together to make the Illusion Short Wedding Dress.
Watch the video below to see how the dress is cut from fabric
© Tobi Hannah
Part Four: Sewing and Overlocking the dress
The Illusion short wedding dress is brought to life by stitching the pattern pieces together in a specific order to form the dress. The bodice pieces are sewn together first, then the skirt pieces are stitched and overlocked. Once this is complete, the whole dress is put together and held by a zip fastening. During each stage of sewing, the seams are very carefully ironed to give a smooth finish. The hemline of the dress is completed and then the dress is pressed further.
The final video shows how the short wedding dress is sewn together. Watch the video below.
© Tobi Hannah
Now you know how short wedding dresses are made. What did you think?
Was it what you expected?