Commercial wedding veils are the biggest rip-off I’ve come across in a long time. I’ve been helping my Future Sister-in-Law (FSIL) get ready for her wedding in August and was horrified when I saw the price tags on veils in bridal shops around town. $200 for a couple of bits of nylon tulle sewn on to chintzy plastic combs? You’ve got to be kidding!!! Even with a few bits of lace or faux pearls attached here and there, that’s a ridiculously inflated price.

You don’t have to have any sewing skills beyond the very basics to create a veil that’s just as nice as those I saw in the stores. Really. I was going to write up a tutorial demonstrating this, but Jennifer Stern beat me to the punch in her article on CraftStylish.

She details the method I used to create a veil for my FSIL. Basically, you cut a couple of pieces of tulle whatever length you want your veil to be. On my example, the short layer is around 20″ long and the long layer is 24″ long. The width the same as the fabric was on the bolt. I cut rounded corners on the bottom of each layer of fabric. There’s no need to finsh the edges of tulle, since it won’t ravel. You can serge it, as Ms. Stern does, do something fancy with fishing line to make the edges curly (I haven’t read enough about this technique to explain it here), or sew some narrow ribbon around the edges and trim off any excess tulle, which is what I did.

Next, holding the two layers together, I hand-basted the top edge and gathered the fabric along this thread until it was the same width as my comb. I used Ms. Stern’s method for attaching the veil to the comb. Unfortunately, I was unable to use ribbon as she did to neaten up this area. No matter what size needle I tried, I could not get the ribbon to go through the tulle. I ended up using perle cotton, which worked out ok, but isn’t quite as refined looking as I imagine a ribbon would have been.

Finally, I sewed a strand of faux pearls across the top of the comb for a special touch. I decided not to do any more than that, since my FSIL’s dress is quite elaborate. An elaborate veil on top of that would overwhelm her. However, you could sew tiny pearls to the top layer of fabric or embellish the comb with other details.

The supplies for all of this cost me $27 and I bought more than I actually used–I didn’t bother shopping around either, so really frugal types undoubtedly could have saved even more. $200 for something that cost around $20? Wow. If someone you love is getting married and you aren’t ready to sew a gown, why not make the veil?

One thing I learned, that wasn’t mentioned in the Sterns article, was how important it was to bring a swatch of the dress fabric when selecting your tulle. If the tulle is much whiter than the dress, it can make it look dingy…

Thank you for all of the positive vibes you sent our way for Sam’s surgery yesterday. It went very well and he’s healing up faster than I can believe. He actually wanted to ride his bike yesterday evening. Sadly, I had to tell him “no,” since he’s not supposed to do anything very physical for 4-5 days afterwards. The next few days are going to be a challenge–in a very good way. I’m glad he’s not feeling listless or sick–and we still have a full bottle of the pain medicine.

I finished my third Stitchette (the girl with the umbrella):

I plan on stitching one more…and then…what? I’m not sure what to do with them. A throw pillow? A wall hanging? Frame them?

I also finished slogging through a set of photos I took at a wedding we attended last week. Claire was one of five flower girls. They were all very pretty and made the celebration really fun with their antics.

I’ve been completely obsessed over trying to sew a dress to wear to my sister-in-law’s wedding next month. It has turned out to be two or three times as much work as I anticipated. Here’s the first dress (which I’m embarrassed to show you):

Oh. my. god. It’s soooooooooo terrible. I look pregnant.

I love the fabric. I love the design (as pictured on the pattern envelope–Simplicity 3831). But this looks sooo bad on me. First of all, I should have known better than to put in a french seam where fabric had been gathered, but I didn’t, and ended up with that ghastly bulky seam. Also, it has become evident to me that commercial pattern drafters don’t like breasts. If I had no breasts, the bottom of the bodice would have fallen in a flattering spot. This most certainly does not. I redrafted the pattern, adding two-and-a-half inches to the length, just to get the seam beneath my breasts rather than directly on them.

The redrafting worked out fine. Nevertheless, the dress still made me look pregnant, so I scrapped that in favor of something a little more streamlined. (I’m going to rip apart the dress and use the fabric to make a blouse later on.)

The second dress has presented its share of challenges. I think the fabric is beautiful, but it’s slippery, stretchy, likes to fray and resents any effort from the iron to press it into shape. It was extremely challenging trying to cut out the pattern pieces, and as I’m sewing, I frequently have to compensate for cutting irregularities. Despite that, it’s coming together much better than the first dress.

My mother will be paying us a visit early next week, which is great, because I’ll need someone to demonstrate installing a zipper. I just can’t wrap my head around it…folding and pressing the fashion fabric and lining, how to get it to all come together… The dress is very close though, and from pin-fittings, I know it fits better than earlier attempts. I just hope I don’t end up looking like too much of a fuddy-duddy in my homemade garment. Many of the wedding guests are fashion concious and care a lot about labels, trends, etc. I’ve never been one of those people though, so I’m not sure why I’m worrying about it now!

Meanwhile, news stories like these are worrying me, so I’m off to market to stock up on food staples:

• Japan’s Hunger Becomes a Dire Warning for Other Nations
• Food-Rationing Confronts Breadbasket