Hey, Thread Heads.
Well, I'm officially a married woman, woo,
and I wanted to share with you
how I made my DIY wedding dress,
just in case you were interested
in making your own version of it.
It could work for a prom dress.
It could work for a wedding dress. It could work for a costume.
I'm really happy with how it came out.
There's definitely things that I would change about it now,
knowing what I know now.
It was totally a learning process,
going through the steps of figuring out how to make it.
I had never made a corset before,
so I had to learn how to make a corset first.
I actually made two versions of the dress
before making it in the duchess satin
that I used for the final dress.
The fabric that I'd bought for the final version of the dress
was about $25 a yard.
I bought my fabric from this website.
Again, it was $25 a yard,
so when you're practicing making the dress
you really want to use something that does not cost as much.
But let me tell you, even when I used muslin
to make a mock-up of the dress,
I had that bridal feeling
when I tried on the muslin version of the dress.
That's how in love with it I was.
I altered the pattern a little bit before I made the final version of the dress,
and I totally shouldn't have done that because I didn't
have time to test out the alteration
before I did it on the final fabric.
I was literally sewing the last button on
at 6:00 a.m. in the morning,
and we were leaving at 7:00 a.m.
to get on the plane to fly to where the wedding was,
so it was chaotic.
I really don't feel like I waited until the last minute.
I mean, I spent a lot of time
doing mock-ups of the dress and figuring out the fit
and the patterns and even the skirt of the dress.
I originally wanted to do a fitted skirt
that was more of a mermaid-type situation,
and it was really difficult.
I couldn't get it to look how I wanted it to look,
so I abandoned that idea completely,
and I actually ended up using a circle skirt pattern
to make the skirt portion of the dress.
And it worked out really great. It's actually super easy
The hardest part about making the dress for me
was keeping the fabric clean,
because you can get white fabric dirty like that.
So basically, what I had to do was tape
white paper down all over the floor
and do everything on top of that white paper.
So when I was cutting out the circle skirt—
and again, it's a floor-length skirt,
so the circle was huge.
You can learn how to make your own circle skirt.
It's super simple.
It's literally you make the big circle
and then the smaller middle circle where your waist hole would be.
I have done a circle skirt tutorial before,
but there's many circle skirt tutorials here on YouTube.
Actually, Secret Life of a Bio Nerd just did a great one,
so if you want to learn how to make your own circle skirt,
I would check out her tutorial.
I also made a lining using the same pattern,
but I used a bridal lining fabric
that can be found at voguefabricsstore.com.
They have everything you need to sew a professional garment.
That's where I got all of my corset boning from, the steel boning.
I got all the specialty needles and pins you need
to sew satin and silk.
You need really, really sharp needles to sew that type of fabric,
otherwise you'll get puckering, and no one wants that.
You can always try to press out puckering,
but, for the most part, you'll always see a slight pucker
if you don't use the right needles and the right thread.
So you really want to take those precautions
because it's really sad when you've spent a lot of money on your fabric
and kind of skimp on the needles
and end up that being the downfall of your garment.
So make sure to get the right needles.
Again, voguefabricsstore.com
has just everything you need.
The hardest part about sewing the skirt portion of the dress
was hand hemming the bottom hem of the skirt.
It took about 12 hours.
I sat here and watched wedding movies the whole time I hemmed it
on top of my white paper. I felt like a crazy person.
It just took a really long time,
but that's how you kind of have to do it with formal garments.
You could just do a double-turn hem and use the sewing machine,
and now I'm kind of wishing I would have done that
because I literally got the bottom of the dress so dirty.
When stuff like this happens, you really question
spending 12 hours doing something.
There is still twigs in here.
Like, I literally have a twig in the dress.
That looks like a footprint.
I'm pretty sure that's a footprint.
For the closure of the skirt, I used an invisible zipper
and a waistband, and, again,
I've done videos on showing you how to do that.
You can watch my how to sew an invisible zipper video
to learn how to sew the zipper
and how to sew a skirt waistband to sew the waist band
to the top of the skirt.
For the corset top, I used the method
I show in my video on how to create a costume corset.
I do everything the same.
I'm using an invisible zipper in the back
to close the back up,
but instead of using plastic boning,
which I show in that video, I used steel boning.
It's a little bit more expensive, but I'm telling you
it's so much more worth it.
Plastic boning only bends like this,
but steel boning bends back and forth but also side to side.
It's pretty remarkable.
With plastic boning, you can have some buckling
because it's not going to bend the way that you need
it to bend for the boning channels.
For a very simple, straight-forward corset or bodice top,
plastic boning could definitely work,
but for something like this, that you really want to define your shape,
you really want to use steel boning.
It is so much better.
I got all my steel boning from voguefabricsstore.com as well,
and they sell it in different lengths,
so according to which section you're putting that boning in,
you want to make sure you know which size each section
of boning you're going to need.
This is kind of like what the boning looks like.
It's really awesome because, again, it bends this way,
and that's side to side, and then obviously it bends this way.
So it's pretty awesome.
This stuff is really cool.
And you want to make sure that it has the
boning enders, the little caps on the end,
because, otherwise, you could stick through your fabric,
and you don't want that to happen.
Another difference in the corset that I made for the wedding dress
versus what I show you to make in my costume corset video
is that for the lining fabric
I used a cotil. I'm not sure if I'm saying that right.
I'm mostly self-taught,
so I've never really actually heard that word spoken to me,
but I'm pretty sure it's pronounced cotil.
It's what they use for ballet corsets,
and any type of standard real-deal corset
is going to use this fabric.
It's a super strong fabric.
It is crazy. It's super stiff.
There's no stretch to it.
So basically, why you want to use this
is because then, for your outer fabric,
you can use anything you want. It can even have stretch, really.
But once you sew it together with this lining fabric,
that fabric is not moving anywhere.
You are going to be— there is not going to be
any stretching to the outer fabric.
Between this fabric and the steel boning,
you're not going anywhere.
Cotil can be kind of expensive,
but this website has it for a really good price,
so I would check that out if you're interested.
Another little detail that I really loved
about the corset that I made for the wedding dress
is that I added black satin buttons
to the back, and essentially I just hand sewed them
right through the lining fabric.
It was the last thing I did. It was so last minute.
I couldn't worry about being all picky about it,
so you can definitely still see the stitching on this side,
but they look so beautiful from this side.
I've always wanted to have a wedding dress
with buttons down my back.
I just love the black satin buttons
that I actually got from a website
called As Cute As a Button.
So if you're interested in finding some black satin buttons,
that's definitely a good place to get them from.
Also, you need the little button loops.
You really don't need the button loops
because I have the zipper, and once it's all zipped together
it just looks like they're buttoned
because everything is so close together-looking,
but I wanted to make sure that I did it right.
And the way that I added it was super easy.
Before I put the zipper in,
I just sewed it right along the seam line of one side,
but pointing this direction, so it was like this.
And then once I sewed the zipper in,
it went like that.
And so it was perfect and really easy to do, actually.
I thought it was going to be a lot more finicky,
but it was super easy, and I love how it turned out.
For the black sash that I wore around my waist,
I just used some Petersham ribbon.
Again, I'm not really sure if I'm saying that right.
Self-taught, never really heard that word said to me before,
so I'm going to say it how I think it's said—
Petersham ribbon.
Well, that's it. That was my wedding dress journey.
I just wanted to share that with you
because I know a lot of people have been wondering
what the dress looked like and how I made it.
I really do hope that inspires you
to try your hand at making your own formal wear.
It's usually not as daunting as it may seem at first.
It's always a lot more difficult in your mind
than it actually is to do.
Everything is a step-by-step process.
As long as you do everything in the correct order,
then you can make your own wedding dress or formal wear.
Also, I'm really excited to announce
that I'm going to be showing you how to create a new costume
here on ThreadBanger every month,
so I really need suggestions
as to what kind of costumes you would like to see.
You know, a costume doesn't just have to be for Halloween.
There's all kinds of cosplay events
and Comic-Con conventions
that people are always looking for a good costume how-to.
So send in your ideas,
and also, don't forget to send in pictures or videos
of your cozy, warm yarn project
for our outfit of the day video.
That will premiere at the end of the month.
You can email pictures to threadbangerstyle@gmail.com
or post videos as a video response right here on YouTube.
All right, everyone, I'll see you later.