Help A Bride Out!

A few weeks ago I got an email from a friend about a friend of hers who is getting married next year. She ordered a dress online from Australia and it had arrived in a bad way! So she asked if I could redo the flowers on the dress the way they are meant to be.

First I started out by having a look at the advertised flowers, they seemed simple enough. Netting covered silk with darker detail around the centre of the petals, two layers of petals with some lovely beading in the centre. So the lovely Helena sent me some fabric and I got to work on some prototypes. First off I made the petal arrangement and cut out netting spikes and sew them into place, but it was so fiddley and looked really scruffy. So I made the petal with a layer of interfacing to stop them from flopping, but I stitched the netting to the petal and that gave me the colour and stiffness I was looking for.

Then we got to work on making the darker netting pattern. I tried darting the netting - BIG mistake. Way too fragile and my machine may never forgive me! Pleating the netting was the only way to do it, it was so very tricky and resulted in quite a few iron burns but the result was so perfect. And here is the finished result... Seven in total going on the dress. Can not wait to see how they look on the dress!