Dreadlocks Wedding Dress - Amazing !!

The second wedding dress I created was begun with upcycled materials like most of my dresses. It had a tiny bit of stretch and I was playing with raw edges a bit more. I created the hemline panel of an easy fray cotton and washed it to accelerate the process. With a piecey hemline, this dress would be awesome to wear to the beach for a shore side wedding in bare feet.

I loved making this gown and loved that it was a bit larger. So often my sizes are influenced by the dress form (Esperanza is an XS-S) that is easiest or prettiest to design on. This time I used my larger form Beatrice which is more of a S-M.

 The pictures were a bit tough to take as the dress had a very slight sheen to the cotton, sort of like a chintz fabric has. It made the pictures flare a lot. This is one of my favorite gowns due to the serendipity factor with the dreadlocks. Looking at the pictures reminds me of the mountains where I lived when this dress was created. Very different fall there than here in south Florida :)

First One of a Kind Wedding Dress

I created the first one of a kind wedding dresses kind of by accident. I had been making fashion after a year of making bags assured me that I never really wanted to be making things that were so soul-less and efficient :) My bags were more funky, retro, casual. They weren't the kind of bag you could keep everything in little compartments - more the big squashy kind that even your passport and water bottle fit into, but you had to dig for it :) They weren't excessively boho - well maybe a little.

But I found some new vintage nylon fabric in a foray into the secondhand universe and I loved it so much ! It felt like it needed a dress somehow....it would be wasted as a slip or nightgown. I had this thicker, sort of almost luxurious hand. That's fabric-speak for it's texture or weight. So on a whim, I just made this lightly fitted, kind of vintage 1930s style dress that seemed to just come to life as it was designed. It fit the S/XS dress form (Esperanza if you're curious) I was using perfectly and made me smile.

It was fresh.....so I called it Creme Fraiche - fresh cream in French.
I grabbed my dress form and took off down into the woods on our then mountaintop home and took pics in the morning when the light was brightest. It seemed to make the dress luminous.

 Someone wonderful found it and loved it...so I tried another !

And thus one of a kind dresses were born...at least mine were.  I was so happy that I began experimenting with more wedding dresses. My next one was a dreadlocks style wedding dress - and the tattered angle was integrated :)

 I've loved every second of making all the one of a kind gowns I've made. Even the one of a kind gown that I made to replace the first one of a kind gown for one bride was one of a kind. It's just hard to duplicate a gown for me somehow. I cook that way too. My family is always amazed and sad when I make a wonderful chocolate chip recipe. I have a hard time doing it the same way twice !!