Joanna's Wedding Dress Quilt

Joanna sent me her wedding gown and the dresses her girls wore at the wedding. It was really difficult to begin, as I always hate to start cutting into something that's already finished - and incredibly beautiful too boot.

As proof, here are the true "before" shots of the dress(es):

The dress, from the bodice down.

The straps, detached from the bodice.

Bridesmaid dress, back.

Bridesmaid dress bottom.

It took a long time to cut them up and design a pattern, but here it is laid out:

Since there was so little pink, I decided to use it sparingly in a pattern of x's and o's.



I didn't want to label each square with tape or a pin because I might have damaged the fabric. Instead, I packaged each "line" in a baggie, sewed each line together and then put them back in the baggie which I then labeled.

Here are the baggies all lined up one through 11 plus the bottom and the top. I need to lay it out again just to make sure I didn't make any mistakes and then I'll sew the lines together.

The Lines:

Here it is, all sewn together. The only thing that remains is to add a line at the top and a line at the bottom. I wasn't originally going to but I have white left and it will frame the pink and add to the overall length of the piece.

Once the top and bottom are done I'll need to figure out what to do about the backing. There's still so much tulle left and the beautiful beaded overskirt, so I'd like to use those in some way. I guess we'll see what happens!

Okay, the top is done:

Close up detail of button and loop from the train:

"X" detail:

Still not sure about that back, but I think I'm going to applique the tops of each bridesmaid dress onto the skirts and then sew them together at the waists so that they fan out top to bottom. I know that probably doesn't make any sense and it'll still leave a few holes, but for now that's the best I got.

Okay, here they are: I've attached each bodice to a skirt and then sewed the skirts together at the waist. Next I'm going to add some tulle and we'll go from there.


The back, more squared off:

I used a couple of the underskirts to square it off and attach it to the face of the quilt.

The straps are not tacked down


Okay, here it is!! The wedding dress quit is DONE. You can see that in each corner I appliqued pieces of the beaded over skirt, and along each edge is tulle taken from the underskirts of the little girls' dresses (there was more of it so I used it instead of the one from the wedding gown).

Corner Detail

Corner Detail

Finished:

All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. A quilt like this would be priced at $700.00.

Finished May 2009