1960’s Wedding Dress

I was gifted a 1960s lace wedding dress.  Unfortunately, I neglected to take a picture of the dress.  It was allover horizontally-oriented lace, had a gathered waist, high neck and short puffy sleeves, much like that in the picture to the right.

Like most vintage wedding dresses, it was a tiny size (didn’t women eat then?) and had yellowed in a number of places.  Some of the lace had disintegrated.

The only usable fabric was in the skirt.

It was lined in a plain white batiste, some of which had suffered the same fate as the lace.

I unpicked all the seams, both lace and batiste.  Then broke all the rules.

I washed it in the washing machine and added bleach – but I did set the machine for delicate!

And it came out beautifully!  No more yellow.

The skirt pieces were not large.  But turning them sideways gave a vertically-oriented placement to the lace.

The lining pieces were slightly larger than the lace due to their hems.

Using Vogue 9062 I thought I might be able to cut a sleeveless layered lace top from the pieces.

The front had to be pieced at the shoulders.  Small pieces were cut from the original sleeves.

The lining made a beautiful longer layer under the lace.  Dart and piecing was done double-layered (lace and lining) as the lace was quite delicate.

The resulting top will be a summer top full of memories as I plan on re-gifting it to the original owner!

I just realized these photos do not include the finished sleeve edges!  They were narrow hemmed with bias tape.