something new...

As mentioned in my last post, I took a pair of scissors to my Mum's "going away dress" that she wore after her wedding in 1969.  Because I wanted a piece of my parents' history to be a part of my wedding, I chose to repurpose pieces of that dress into a headband as well as a "bouquet" for myself.

Both were easy peasy to make - the hardest part was making that first cut into such an old, beautiful dress.

First, the headband.  I just used a basic black headband that I already owned, a piece of the silver trim from the jacket, and a $5 flower clip.

Since the silver beaded strip from the jacket had a silk lining, I decided to cut a small slit in one end to slip the headband through - as opposed to affixing the strip on top of the headband...

There were a few spots where the lining was frayed but I later cleaned that up and used a few dabs of hot glue to keep everything firmly in place.  Because the flower had an alligator clip, I just attached that onto the headband once I had it in my hair - that way it actually held some of my hair in place as well.

I think my Mum was disappointed that I wouldn't let her order me flowers to carry into our informal ceremony.  Not only are flowers expensive, I haven't found any whose smell doesn't remind me of a funeral home.  So, because I would probably just fiddle with my hair or bite my nails, I needed something to occupy my hands and take the place of a flower bouquet.  The historic home/garden where we had our ceremony did not allow open flame so candles were out of the question.  Anything else that I  thought of was too quirky until I decided to use some more of my Mum's going-away-dress.

I was playing with James while I made my "bouquet" so I didn't get a chance to take pics of the first part.  I had a styrofoam ball from Michaels and secured another piece of the silver beaded fabric around the ball, leaving a long piece dangling as a handle.

I cut the ivory dress fabric into squares.  I didn't measure anything but they were roughly 4"x4".  I folded each square into a triangle and then folded the other two corners down so all corners were together and I had myself a little poof!

I just used straight pins and attached to the styrofoam ball...

As you can see, the edges of this fabric are a bit frayed.  Most of that was hidden once the entire ball was filled with "poofs" and then I just trimmed any visible stragglers.  There were also a few spots, mostly around the beading, where the pins didn't want to stay put so I just used a few dabs of hot glue.  Also, one side of the fabric had more of a matte look while the other side has some shine to it.  I alternated the way I folded each square so that my final bouquet had some variation.  Voila!

(For those budget-conscious folks like myself, my wedding headband and bouquet cost me less than $6.)