August 2, 2013

The day job

Sometimes, I mention being busy at work, but normally, I don't go into details about said work. Today is a bit different.
To make a long story short, "work", for me, has for the past two and a half years meant doing alterations for a bridal store (in fact, this is the second store I've worked for). This involves identifying and solving fitting issues but also fittin customers for corselettes and hoop skirts and discussing and creating style alterations. I should mention it does not mean making wedding dresses to order. I think I could do that but I could never sell such dresses at the price most customers want to pay.
I'm mentioning this now because I came across some pictures on my phone. Being phone pictures, taken by nasty artificial light, they are not of quality but I hope you can see what I'm trying to show you anyway.

I took these a month or so ago, after completing particularly involved project.

The customer was a very nice lady who was getting married while being six months pregnant. She chose a combination of a white skirt and a black top. I took the waistband and some of the top of the skirt off and put on a wide jersey band. Functional, but not a very impressive job.
The top was a different matter.



Her black top started out exactly the same as this white one.



It was too small, so I made a lacing panel at the back (which I do fairly often). She preferred a halter over shoulder straps so I took the straps out, turned them around and made a back closure with buttons and elastic loops. And I filled in the side next to the straps to avoid both gaping and showing the bra. To extend the top over her belly, I knew I would need to make some kind of pattern. To do this, I pinned muslin to the bottom of the top and drew on lines for the bottom and side seams. I used those as a pattern for the extension-bit. On the outside, I mimicked the pleated design of the rest of the top.

In the end, it fitted her very well. 
I thought this might be nice to share with you, or, in fact, I guess I just wanted to show off my hard work.

11 comments:

  1. Wow, nice work! Thanks for showing it off! :)

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  2. Wow, that´s pretty impressive! This bride is really happy to have you altering her top! Great work!

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  3. What beautiful work, you are very talented! Thanks for sharing, I'm amazed at the clever way you made these changes.

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  4. great work! Your idea is very creative.

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  5. You did a wonderful job on that, the bride must be very happy with that!

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  6. Great work Lauriana. I honestly think alterations are often harder than making a dress from scratch! One reason why I wouldn't make wedding dresses for others is that you may bump into some very anxious women ;) feel free to share more about your day job if you like, I would love reading about it

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  7. wow, that's a wonderful alteration! Great job! And so clever to make a lacing panel at the back! You're right to show it off! :)

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  8. Great job! Good for you that you get to do something related to what you love doing as your day job. Lucky you :)

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