29 Jun 2017

A Labor of Love for Jessica

It’s been a year since the day Jessica and Ben were married. Jessica is my middle daughter who just like me, shares the love of sewing all things. She opened up her own sewing studio when she moved to Atlanta Georgia. My how time flies by, and how busy we all are. It might be a year later, but I wanted to share with my sewing family and friends the labor of love that my sewing students showed for Jessica to make her day extra special. Jessica’s 1940s style wedding, was a beautiful site with an outdoor garden setting in Atlanta, Georgia. She designed and made her wedding dress using a vintage sewing pattern, and then she made the brides-maid dresses and flower girls dress with the help of myself and some of our dear sewing students in the studio.

It was a little tough trying to make the bridesmaid’s dresses that I was in charge of with Jessica sewing in Atlanta and me here in Chadds Ford, PA. We had to mail fabric, zipper, and patterns. Many texts and photos were exchanged with questions about alterations, fit, neck lines, and hem lengths. I was feeling a little stressed, okay, okay, I was feeling very stressed. So friends who knew how to sew and some of my students jumped in and offered to help with zippers, hand sewing hems, and making many adjustments and alterations to the dresses. Both Jessica and I can’t thank them enough for the labor of love they showed her to make her wedding day so special. She felt like a princess and it was the happiest day of her life!

I have been sewing for more than 40 years, but yet, I learned some things during this process. Maybe not so much in new sewing techniques, but more about perhaps my confidence and my expectance for such a special event. I was very nervous, overwhelmed, and very hard on myself during the process and my three daughters and my older students were calming me down. My how the tables were turned for this process. I am usually calming my students nerves down during their special day where they present their work for our annual fashion show.

My favorite part of the dress were the beautiful pleats in the back as shown in this photo. They were challenging in the fact that the pleats were set up in line with the zipper, quite challenging, but an absolutely beautiful result. As soon as the wedding ceremony was over, Jessica took her glass slippers off and put her dancing saddle shoes on! You can view more of Jessica process of designing and making her wedding dress here on her blog with her story.