Wedding tidbits....

I am not sure how many know that the wedding party for Scott and Michelle's wedding is more like a family parade...

This wedding is a sweet combination of love of family and the support of friends. When plans first began for the wedding, the kids had a really hard time to single out one or two of our family to be in the wedding party, because each and every one of our cousins are precious and a choice was not possible. You know the whole "all or nothing" statement... well, it really came into play when they announced that they would find a job and position for all the members of the family.

In the end, we have several little girls and boys who have their own special job to do.

My sister, who is a master sewing genius offered to help with making little girl and big girl dresses and I sew quite a bit myself. Over the past year, ideas were passed about, pondered, plans for sewing dates made and met. January was our first sewing weekend and it took place here at my house. Gail, Mert and all Gails sewing stuff arrived and we began our plan. We sewed all weekend but didn't really make any dresses, we planned out some other projects for the wedding and shopped for bargains and sewed from morning til evening. We took over the entire livingroom and the sewing room downstairs!

The extra bonus to this visit was my sister left me with her amazing sewing machine that embroidery's so amazingly. She was going away to USA for 6 weeks and wouldn't need the machine so it was mine until Easter.. yippee... Well, let me tell you that I played for hours with this thing... the problem is.... I played and didn't sew much because its a lot of searching for things and a big of computer work to set the design and then you finally get to sew... we you know what its like to get on design websites... you lose HOURS.... hence... I never did a lick of housework, or blogged... or much of anything else.... below is just one of the cool designs I made just for fun!!!!

Ok, as usual, I got off track because of my sister's really cool machine.... anyway, after my sister's weekend here, she left for the south and I went back to winter in the Valley. We both had homework sort of... to do before we got to see each other again for a sewing date in June to make dresses.

As the winter slowly passed, I did some homework but mostly I played with her machine and didn't do any of the wedding homework!! But as the wedding date is creeping closer, a little panic started to seep in and we planned our sewing date a few weeks earlier than originally planned.

Our second sewing weekend was two weekend's ago and we had big plans. We had 7 white dresses to make.... 3 different patterns, and 4 different sizes.... some had pleats some had full lining others had wonky necklines...

I arrived in Fredericton around noon on Saturday and by 1:00 we were off to the fabric store to look at a few things we needed like 11 yards of lining for these dresses.. we needed buttons and zippers for other projects and toggles for yet other projects. Stephanie came along for moral support but I also had plans for her creative mind and resourcefulness!

Once we got home, we were full steam ahead, with Gail at the sewing machine and me at the ironing board. Stephanie occupied the floor for part of the time but moved to a chair for the last half. I pinned, gathered, pressed and organized... Gail sewed, pinned, gathered, pieced... and in the end..... by Monday at noon, we had sewing 7 dresses with a total of 5 zippers, and 75 pleats! The pictures below give away no secrets as they are inside out with their linings all pinned ready for my handsewing!

Stephanie had researched, designed and created several different types of flowers to adorn the dresses and we have settled on the 7 petal daisy.... in several different colors...

Next, the dresses are now in the mail to the girls who come from the each end of Canada and in the middle too... this is a fitting shipping.... and hemming too... they get sent back to me... I hem or adjust and voila... done! yippee.....