The Fiesta Dance Company is my newest client. They are a professional Latin Dancing Troupe here in Cincinnati, OH.

The white fringe dresses are made of 4" Rayon fringe sewn over Tricot fabric with imbedded silver sequins which you can see in the first picture in the top row. It gave a really neat sparkle as the dancers moved.

This is Before & After pictures of the same gown. On the left is when Mom wore the gown for her wedding. On the right is the daughter in the same gown altered for design and fit. (same photographer too)

The first task was to make the gown larger. For this I used the fabric from the original back bow to gusset the sideseams. Since the sleeves were falling apart and needed to be replaced anyway we bought Satin to match the gown and made sleeves (using the original lace for insets) and a new back bow to make it all look like it belonged.

This is also a Before & After of the same gown, but it had been through 3 weddings by the time this bride inherited it. Note the obvious hole marked by the yellow circle. And again the sleeves had deteriorated.

This bride wanted a very different look than her 3 sisters. She designed a lovely embellishment for the train which included adding lace appliques to the sides where the hole was. That and the totally new sleeves give the gown a very fresh look.

Another interesting Before & After. Sorry I do not have a picture of the bride because she did not get married before I moved out of North Carolina. The gown was originally made in Italy for the Mother's wedding. She went back to Italy and found some lace that matched well enough to add a section of length, a sweep train and new sleeves. Since the lace was so delicate I sewed the addition with train onto the lining. It gave it a neat effect. The bride also wanted to scoop out the neckline to give the gown a more dramatic look. I think it worked nicely.

Working directly with a Bridal Salon offers a Sewist many advantages. One of which is the ability to order fabric along with the bride's maids dresses that will match perfectly or compliment the other maids. Here are 2 examples of Bridal parties with the same maid's dresses. Since maid's dresses usually do not come in sizes below 8 or 6, it is hard to fit junior maids and flower girls. In these cases I would have the brides order fabric along with her maid's dresses and we would make the additional dresses.

In the first picture the bride chose to have her flower girl the same color as the maids for her lining, but chose white for the lace. In the second party, the junior maids are in contrasting colors, but the same fabric.

Here's another cool trick you can do by ordering extra yardage with a Mother of the Bride's dress. The MOB, on the left, picked out this lovely dress in a pail yellow and requested extra yardage. The MOG , on the right, had us make her dress with the fabric.

You may think it a little odd for both Mothers to wear the same color, but this wedding was special. All the guests wore combinations of black, white and yellow. It was a stunning wedding.

As the wedding date neared the maid's dresses had still not arrived. Tension was heightening, but on assurances from the salon that the dresses would be in soon the bride remained calm - until the dresses arrived 2 weeks before the wedding in a very hot pink color. They were totally not what she had ordered, but the company would not admit a mistake nor did they have time to reorder if they could.

At this time I had moved my business from above the Bridal Salon across town to the back room of a friend's fabric store. The owner of the Salon called and asked if anything could be done at such short notice. I went looking at the bolts of satin fabric we had in the store and found a light pink that seemed to be within the color range they were describing. The bride came over with one of the flower girl dresses. The color match was too good to be true.

We made the 4 bride's maid's dresses in less than 2 weeks and the wedding went off without any more trouble. Many horrifying things happen when you are planning a wedding, but if the bride can keep her head on straight just about any problem can be overcome. Now, so much monochromatic pink was not what the bride wanted but it did look good. We were even able to die the shoes in time to match the dresses.