Wedding photos - Fabric Challenge Kimono Silk wedding dress

The fabric challenge is complete and the wedding photos are here.  As I described in my first post this was one of my most special projects. Susan asked me to make a wedding dress for her using some vintage kimono silk and laughingly told me she was planning a hippie wedding in San Francisco's Golden Gate park, with the guests arriving on bicycles.  I did imagine a few different scenarios, but was totally charmed when the photos finally arrived.  A lovely wedding in the park and a beautiful smile on Susan's face.

Here is Susan with her mom putting the final touches on her look.

Susan and Brian in front of the Conservatory of Flowers in Golden Gate Park.  

I think this photo may be my favorite - the colors are fantastic. Wedding photography is by Tim Daw, website timdawphotography where you can see his portfolio. I did make a shawl with the remaining kimono silk, lined with ivory silk faille. As it turned out, the weather was a bit chilly that day so she wore the wrap during the outdoor ceremony.

And lastly - there were bicycles!  Susan and Brian opted not to cycle themselves, I think that was a good choice, although you can see the vehicle they are riding in appears to have 4 sets of pedals. Some of the guests did arrive in the park on their own bicycles with many in full victorian and steampunk finery.  

Can I say it?  So San Francisco!   I loved creating this dress and getting to know Susan. I wish them joy and happiness for their life together. 

If you are interested in the background on this project here are the links to the previous posts: 

first post:  with background on this vintage fabric

second post:  starting the design and fitting

third post: underlining with silk organza and completion, photos of dress

Thanks for reading, and Happy Sewing, Beth

Fabric Challenge - Kimono silk wedding dress - part 3

Thanks to everyone for the wonderful comments on my previous posts.  This kimono silk wedding dress was so much fun to create and I did wonder if the unusual fabric and color would appeal, but the response has been wonderful and I appreciate it very much.

I will tease you with one wedding day photo of Susan and her mother.  More photos to come of the wedding in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Once I had the bodice assembled, it was time to figure out how to do the skirt.  When making the muslin, I seamed together 14" wide lengths of the pink cotton, in order to be working with the same type of yardage as when I used the silk, and then gathered it into the waist.  Recall that Susan wanted to be able to bicycle to her ceremony, so the skirt needed to be full.  Once she tried on the muslin, we both thought she wasn't really the gathers or ruffles type, but reserved judgement until we got to that point in our collaborative design process.  By now I had underlined the whole bodice in the silk organza and it gave the fabric such a nice weight.

This fabric was interesting to sew, and had some quirks that added to the fabric challenge aspects.  The silk is so tightly woven that it was almost impossible to get a pin through it.  I generally use long pins, probably a bit too big for fine fabrics, so I knew I would need to pull out the silk pins from my stash.  However they would not even pierce the fabric.  Amazing.  At the fabric store I bought a package of each type of extra-fine pins and tried them all out, finally found one that seemed sharp enough to get through the fabric.  On the sewing machine I used a Schmetz Microtex Sharp Needle 70/10.  My metal thimble was absolutely necessary for the hand stitching, or I would have had a punctured finger in no time.  In doing some research online I learned vintage kimonos made from this type of fabric are unstitched, completely disassembled to be cleaned and then re-sewn together.  I thought that seemed unlikely but now I understand that despite being very thin and light this fabric is unbelievably strong.


Which is a long way of saying that this fabric would not gather.  Have you ever tried to gather some heavy fabric and it would not cooperate?  Despite its light weight I tried and gave up. At that point pleats seemed the only option, so I played around on the dress form with various size pleats. Final version had the center front smooth and then large pleats taking up the fullness around to the center back.

This also served to hide the seams of the 14" panels and gave the dress a hint of kimono styling which seemed fitting.  


I had basted the skirt with pleats onto the bodice and at that point realized that it needed a bit more oomph, so I underlined the whole skirt with silk organza as well.  This gave the skirt the perfect fullness and body without being too stiff.  I can't wait to try this technique again on another dress. 

For the hem I machine stitched the organza to the pink silk, inside the seam allowance, and then turned up the hem and hand stitched it to the organza so there is no hem showing on the right side.  I didn't press the hem or the pleats to keep the soft look.  The dress was completely lined in pink bridal satin, a very heavy lining that gave it even more body.  Clothes that feel good are so nice to wear, and this dress has the added treat of making that swish-swish sound that only silk on silk provides.  Lovely!

Finished dress on the form.  This photo is the best of the bunch, when I finished the dress it was a gloomy day and the lighting was less than ideal.  As it happens, I had it about 75% percent finished when my back problems struck. I did finish the dress but I wasn't working at my full speed, in fact I stopped working on it entirely for about 5 weeks. Consequently the photography was less than ideal.  But the important thing - finishing the dress - that was accomplished.  Whew!  And Susan was as sweet as could be, considering she was anxiously waiting for her wedding dress. 

Next post, photos of the wedding.  And yes, there are bicycles!

Link to the first post on this dress, how it started,  Kimono Silk wedding dress.

Second post on this dress, design and initial construction. Kimono Silk wedding dress, part 2.


Thanks for reading.  Happy Sewing,  Beth

Fabric challenge - Kimono silk wedding dress - part 2

Sometimes procrastination is my friend.  I can tell you now that I very much procrastinated when starting and then making this dress. Sometimes there are technical issues that I seem to work out in my mind and this fabric created a lot of them. So I let my thoughts marinate, or percolate, or just stew until I come up with some solutions. 

The overriding issue in this fabric was the pattern, which was large, boldly colored and repeated every 14', which was the same as the width, so it was tricky to lay out the floral elements as a design motif in the finished dress shape.  At first I tried to cut around the floral design for the bodice pieces, so that it would not be uneven or have any bull's eye effect on the bust.  After playing around with it for what seemed like hours, I finally realized that I needed to use the floral design as a focus, in fact choose where to put it instead of trying to avoid it, and then everything flowed from that. The largest single pattern piece in the bodice was the center front, so I placed the floral element in the center front, where it would be folded into the pleats and give a symmetry to the whole dress.  Even though the bodice was composed of smaller pieces, I wanted the overall look to have the same spacing in the flower pattern as the finished skirt, so I cut the midriff pieces in mostly solid pink areas of the fabric. 

Here is a look at the side, the yellow flowers on the front and back ended up matching so well at this point, with a similar match on the other side, partly due to placement when I cut out but also just luck at the size and shape of the pattern pieces. 

Lest you think that things always go well here at Casa SunnyGal, I had a moment of horror when I had the entire dress basted together for a fitting.  Something I didn't notice when I was cutting out the bodice pieces, but there was a very slight color difference between the first yard of the bolt and the silk further inside the roll.  Maybe inside the roll it was completely protected and the first part faded over the years.  In any case, when I started the dress I was trying to conserve yardage since we weren't sure how full or long the skirt was to be, so I cut the bodice pieces from the first part of the roll.  I cut out the entire bodice, hand stitched each piece with silk organza underlining, and then sewed 5 lengths together to make the skirt.  As soon as I had finished the bodice (including basting in the zipper) I noticed that the midriff portion was a bit yellowed.  No one else could really see it, until I pointed it out, and then everyone could see it.  (everyone being my usual gang of style consultants, including sis, mom and assorted friends).

It may not appear that horrifying here, but look at how yucky and yellowish the piece on the left is, especially where it was seamed to the upper bodice and skirt.  I could see it miles away, just taunting me.  And to think that this was the first time I did a silk organza underlining.  All hand stitched.  So much work.  Sob . . .       The silk organza was lovely to work with, I ordered it from Fashion Sewing Supply, and you will see in the next post I ended up using it for the entire dress.   

That is the pink satin lining you see peeking out at the top of the strap. Since the fabric was 14" wide something had to give, so I pieced the top of the shoulders together with the pink silk fabric.  Call it a design element or something. In the scheme of things it worked out fine.

So I did the fitting.  Did not mention it to Susan.  She did not notice at all.  Anyway I knew I was going to take it all apart and re-do the midriff portions.  Which I did. So much better . . sigh of relief and lesson learned, scrutinize those vintage fabrics carefully in all types of light.

Next post, skirt portion and finished dress.  I will try to post this weekend and I do have some fantastic wedding photos to share.  

I am currently working on about a zillion (only slight exaggeration) projects but making great progress on a silk charmeuse shirt - with hidden button placket that is turning out very nicely :)

Happy Weekend Sewing,  Beth


Here is a link to the next post in this series.

Fabric challenge – Kimono silk wedding dress

Sometimes a project comes along that delights me from the beginning.  I was contacted last year by Susan, who found me on the web and asked if I would be interested in making a wedding dress for her using some Japanese kimono silk.  We talked briefly on the phone and then decided to meet in person so she could show me the fabric and talk about possibilities.  Once in a while you meet a person and have an instant connection. That night she decided to have me design and make her dress.  Talk about faith – I have never made a wedding dress before, but faith is her business, so to speak, as she is a hospital chaplain. She had a roll of kimono silk which she received as a gift many years ago when her family lived briefly in Japan.  Pink floral silk, 14 inches wide!  Very beautiful but certainly unusual for a wedding dress.  I was shaken a bit by this fabric challenge, but she told me she and her fiance were committed to a green lifestyle as much as possible, her words were “we are having a casual hippie wedding in Golden Gate Park” and she liked the idea of using this vintage fabric instead of buying something new.  So challenge accepted and I got to work on the design. 

First task was to measure the roll and see how much I had to work with.  Once I unrolled the bolt I was really struck by the quality of the fabric. 

Here is a closer look at the end of the fabric.  The length of fabric was folded in the center and rolled on a 1" dowel. There were a series of colors on the end which seemed to be hand painted.  The gold stamp in the lower left corner says "Daikey Kyoto".

That sent me to the web to do some research and I came to the conclusion that this fabric was hand painted in the Yuzen Dye method. The artist creates the outline of the design on the plain white silk fabric, then goes over it with a rice-paste resist which acts as a barrier to contain the colored dyes.  The colors are painted on and then it is heated to affix the design.  One of the final steps is to add the background color. The fabric is heated several times during this process to make it colorfast.  I have simplified this greatly and found some very interesting websites describing this method, Yuzen Dyeing at Ishida Mansen Koujo, Kyoto and Kyoto Yuzen Dyeing.  If you are interested in textiles they are worth reading. 

So onto the dress design.  Creating the skirt portion seemed quite possible, using the fabric lengthwise but the bodice was a puzzle.  And there was the pattern to consider.  The floral motifs were quite large, about 12 inches across and I didn't want them to look uneven.  In the end I cut out the front bodice piece across one of the floral sections and then cut out each piece based on that.  A couple of additional challenges to note, Susan is tall, 5'8" with a long torso, and she wanted to be able to enter the wedding ceremony on a bicycle.  Other than that it was up to me.  And as things turned out, she was a dream client who loved every detail I chose.  What more could a dressmaker ask for?  

Here is a look at the first muslin design. I made it in pink cotton so we could get an idea how it would look in the final fabric.  I cut out 14 inch wide panels and sewed 5 together to create the skirt to replicate the actual fabric.  For the bodice, I needed pieces that could be fit on the fabric width with the pattern in a horizontal orientation.   Not too promising when I finished this but when does a cotton muslin look good?  For the bodice portion I did use a pattern, New Look 6002.

The fit was just about right, I shortened the midriff portion a bit as I had lengthened it too much but otherwise it was good.  I had some doubts about the gathered skirt but that request for a bicycle-friendly design kept that for now.  As it turned out I changed that which you will see in my next post.  Until then,

Happy sewing,  Beth

Here is a link to the next post in this series.