How to Make a Wedding Dress

Designing and making your own wedding dress can add a personal touch to this special event. Whether your gown is traditional or something more expressive of your own individual style, you can make the dress-making process easier by understanding your own capabilities and level of skill before you begin this once-in-a-lifetime sewing project.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Bridal and fashion magazines
• Measuring tape
• Pattern
• Cotton muslin
• Rotary wheel
• Transfer paper
• Pattern-drafting paper
• Steamer

Plan Your Design

1. Find inspiration for your dress design by flipping through bridal and fashion magazines. Because you will be making the dress, you can mix and match your favorite bodice, skirt and train looks to create a truly unique wedding dress.
2. Visit your local fabric store to find a pattern which most closely matches your ideal wedding dress. Remember that you can customize details such as skirt volume, train length and trim once you have the basic shape of your gown in pattern form.

Sew a Muslin Mock-Up Dress

3. Enlist a friend to take your measurements. Accuracy is important, especially when you are working with commercially produced patterns.
4. Create a mock-up of your wedding dress in cotton muslin before you cut into the real fabric you have chosen for your dress.
5. Ask your friend to assist you with fitting the muslin to your form. Special attention should be paid to the bust seam lines and to maintaining a center back seam on the straight of grain.

Complete Your Wedding Dress

6. Unstitch the muslin mock-up, making sure that any new stitching lines are clearly marked.
7. Transfer the new pattern to draft paper or directly to your final dress fabric using a rotary wheel and transfer paper.
8. Cut out the pattern in the final dress fabric, making sure to include plenty of seam allowance.
9. Stitch your dress together following the pattern instructions. Details such as invisible zipper installation and lining construction are generally provided by most commercially produced patterns.
10. Have a fitting to make any final adjustments to the construction of your dress. This should be done before any appliquéd trim is applied.
11. Take the time to steam your dress before walking down the aisle. Any wrinkles that were made during the construction process can be easily removed, giving your dress a nice, professional look.

Tips & Warnings

• Give yourself plenty of time to complete your wedding dress when you make it yourself. Construction may take several months, depending on the intricacy of the design, and you may find yourself easily distracted by the many other tasks involved in planning a wedding.