...quilts by kate...wedding

Cory's Wedding Dress Quilt

2011-07-04T13:50:00.000-07:00

First, the before picture. Doesn't she look lovely?

The Front:

Cory sent me her wedding gown and two of her bridesmaid dresses. I love the dark purple accent color.

The binding is made from the underskirt of the bridesmaid dresses.

The flower is a pin that can be removed, but since it was one more accent piece that was sent I thought I'd go ahead and use it.

The Flower, centered.

The Back:
There wasn't enough fabric to do the backing so I bought a piece of plain white satin and then, after quilting the top to it (with some muslin in between) I used the purple tulle that Cory had underneath her skirt to cover it. The dark purple tulle from the bridesmaid dresses I used as an additional border on two sides.
You can see how the two pieces of light purple tulle sort of meet in the middle. I didn't tack those down or stitch them together because, since this used to be a dress, I like the idea of it still having fluidity.
The dark purple tulle is also not tacked down, just sewn into the border to allow for additional movement.

All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. A quilt like this would be priced at $600.00.

Finished July 2011.

Susie's Wedding Dress Quilt

2009-08-28T14:50:00.001-07:00

First, the before shots:
So beautiful, right?

I was able to take a look at these pictures in advance and those diagonal layers caught my attention right away. I decided that I really wanted to leave them intact if at all possible. Keep in mind, though, that this is a tiny girl - the dress was size 6! - so if I left the bulk of the top intact there wouldn't be much to work with. Still, I was hopeful that it would all come together.

First I cut up the skirt, or at least, I cut up the part of the skirt that I was able to use for the back of the quilt, while leaving a lot of the top alone:

Then I took the bodice and below (about to the knee) apart:
Here it is laid out on one of the underskirts. I had really wanted to use the underskirt for the base of the top of the quilt, but it was sewn together with lots of curves and it didn't lay flat no matter how I pulled:So I bought a pretty piece of sateen and used it as the base instead.
And then I attached the lace over-skirt from the front of the dress to the bottom of the quilt so that it looks like an actual skirt:
And I used the beautiful long lace over skirt from the train to accent the triangles I'd used for the back:

The bodice up close:
A monogrammed hankie used at the wedding:

Front:

Back:

And a special treat: I finally figured out how to work my video recorder on the camera so voila! A little YouTube of the finished quilt!

Front:

Back:

All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. A quilt like this would be priced at $450.00.

Finished August 2009.

Joanna's Wedding Dress Quilt

2009-08-27T09:12:00.000-07:00

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

Finished:

All quilts by kate are one-of-a-kind originals. A quilt like this would be priced at $500.00.

Finished May 2009