Friend of the Bride Dress :)

My first little adventure!! My dear friend was getting married and I needed a dress for her wedding! The color was royal blue, which is very hard to find right now because the fashion gods have dictated for all women to wear only navy blue this year. Fiends! I finally ended up in David's Bridal and found the right dress, for too much money, and not enough coverage in the front. Needless to say, I bought it knowing I could work my own magic on it :)

So here is what I had to work with:

It was pretty good I just needed a little something for that front and, of course, I absolutely refused to wear a camisole under it. Nothing could make such a beautiful dress look more tacky. Besides the straps would show. So taking my cues my the dress' folded and draped appearance, I went out and bought some satin/silk ribbon. I then folded it and pinned it together like so:

When I checked it against the dress I decided that there were too many ruffles, so I took it apart and made fewer, larger, ruffles. Less is more they say!

I then hand-sewed a simple running stitch as close to the bottom of the ruffles as possible. Sorry, no pictures for this part. The important thing is to make sure not to pull the pins out before you have sewed a part and keep it as close to the edge as possible. Then I laid it in the dress and oriented it so I could have the ruffles where I wanted them. I pinned it and whipstiched it into place.

You can see how he ruffles are larger in the first picture. *Another hint* When sewing into an expensive dress like this you don't want the stitches to show through the front. It looks horrible and ruins the dress. Usually there will be a backing material and you want to make sure you stitched in that. If you don't have backing material, I suggest you find another way to alter the dress or give up.

Make sure you stitch the top parts to the sides of the dress so the ruffles don't flop around. If you do it right, it looks beautiful!

The finished product!! I got many compliments and people said if they didn't know I had done it, they would have guessed it was a natural part of the dress. It only took about half an hour/ an hour altogether and was fairly simple to do! Give it a try and send me pics of your attempts!!!