Steampunk Wedding~*~

My first Steampunk wedding set is complete! And here are the photos to prove it~

 I had so much fun making this but it also scared me to death. As a self taught seamstress (who is still trying to figure her way around a pattern!) I had the design I wanted planted firmly in my mind the moment I saw this old, abandoned wedding dress but hadn't the faintest idea how to get from there to here.

I really need to take before and after pictures more. But I found this old dress in a thrift store in Florida. It was crazy; lace and organza from tip top of the neck to completely over the wrists. Puffy shoulders, full skirt and a cathedral train to boot (or trip all over at least). Besides being huge and entirely covering in every way it was torn to shreds. So not only did I cut it up and redesign it but I had to actually do some restoration work as well.

The whole project was incredibly intimidating. It didn't help that space I had to work with was so small and cluttered that I couldn't even spread the whole dress out. It actually turned out that I made a few bad cuts and had to stitch them back together (not super fun). I took ruffles from the extra on the bottom of the skirt to replace damaged ones in the train. I delicately ripped the stitches out of lace only to hand sew it back in another way.

Honestly I carried this project around for months just being too scared to work on.

But I charged forward and in the end of it all I couldn't be more proud. It turned out absolutely fabulous, if I do say so myself.

The hat wasn't a great challenge like the skirt. I was able to just let the creativity flow and it came out so unique and fun.

(I'll tell you a little secret~ the buttons on the top came about because I was working on another project and flecked some paint on the finished hat! I was devastated as I couldn't replace the fabric, couldn't paint over it, couldn't hide it with more lace, so I took some buttons from the original dress and ta-da no ones the wiser and it adds a detail that now that it's there I just can't live without. I'm going to add random little buttons to everything!! Thank all that's holy for those awesome little mishaps.)

This set sold within days of being up on our etsy. ~*~