I’ve become completely obsessed with the bamboo bodice, which this blog here on The Shapes of Fabric does a much better job of talking about and demonstrating than I ever could.
I’ve been researching wedding stuff for almost a year now, since we got engaged last November, but it’s not been all that long since I actually decided to make my own dress. Ever since I’ve made that choice I’ve been looking at a whole world of different silhouettes and trying to work out the direction I want to take it. I’ve had lots of conversations with my nearest and dearest about what we all might wear, and most importantly what I might wear!
Without going into too much detail, the current choice seems to be falling between quite a classic full gown and something a lot more contemporary, relaxed and dare I say hipster in vibe. We’re getting married in a beautiful historic building but then having our reception in a much more modern, exposed-brickwork and iron-girders type of space. So I want to look like I belong in both, and I’m having a lot of fun doing little drawings and sending photos to my friends when I find inspirational shapes on Pinterest and such.
I’ve got about 15m of the world’s cheapest polyester with which to make my toiles and experimenting with fabric manipulation is such a delight! I’m getting a mannequin for Christmas (one of the Bootstrap custom ones) so it’ll get easier at that point, but even holding up fabric in the mirror and playing with drape is something I didn’t know I’d enjoy.
And I think that’s why I’ve got so enamoured of the bamboo bodice concept, which is a much more structured but fundamentally still quite organic draped effect and I just want to play with it. Did you see the sleeve variation on the blog above? So beautiful! I’m daunted by how weird the paper patterns look but that’s also part of the charm. Take this weird shape of fabric and turn it into something amazing. There aren’t really enough hours in the day, though!
My second corset toile is ready to be cut and assembled, using a different base pattern to the first attempt, and I think I’ll ultimately end up somewhere between the two. Then I need to work out whether I want to make a foundation garment in its own right or if I’d prefer to make it into part of the dress, like in the Dior corselette constructions I’ve pored over online. Plenty of time to figure it all out, I guess – but less than a year, now, though!