Have you ever had a project haunt you?
I did.
It was this dress.
It hung in the doorway at Amelia’s for a really long time. It was damaged, it had a 22 inch waist, but it had one or two good parties left in it. I knew that it was mine to restore if I wanted to.
Fast forward a few months or was it a year? I get a call from the shop saying that someone bought the dress and was coming to see me about making it fit a normal sized person. I was a little worried. Who was this girl?
Turns out the girl was someone I knew. Devaki Knowles of Fun Loving Photos. Someone who’s work I greatly respected. Someone who’s taken some really good shots of my work.
It was meant to be.
I spent a few months restoring the dress and bringing it back to life. Glue (hot glue, spray glue, super glue) , spray paint, eyelets, blood, sweat, you name it.
We started with a new dress to use as a base and I did a full transplant of the embellished tulle. Incorporation of the original bodice was tricky. The original dress had a side zipper and the new dress had a back zipper. I ended up going with a corseted side on the bodice. It solved the closure and size issue.
Mid-way through the project, I was hired to make the headpiece. I don’t usually make them, but I had been saving up bits from the dress and it made sense to forge ahead with my arsenal of glue. We were low on time so I decided to spray paint the birdcage netting antique gold instead of trying to track it down online.
Here’s the slideshow of the project from start to finish. I don’t sketch so I took a lot of pictures of the dress in project so Devi could see how things were going. The photos from the actual wedding are by John Leach. As always, Devi makes my work look like million bucks.