Banner Love

Have I told you guys that I’m a letters person? I like the way that letters look. I love looking through fonts to pick the perfect ones. My favorite discovery of the past year is how to use glyphs in Adobe Illustrator. I can’t do anything else in that stupid program, but I can write pretty words. I also love my handwriting and have worked since the second grade to be satisfied with it.

It’s no surprise, then, that when I saw this image on one of my new favorite sites, Moda BakeShop, I was inspired.

Happy Birthday Banner by Jen Duncan (tutorial)

As soon as I saw this I thought, “That’s a solution to the banner problem!”

See, we are getting married under a tent. This tent will be in the backyard of a home. I’ve been struggling with how to dress up one end of the tent so that there is a nice area defined where the ceremony will take place. The guests will be facing toward a farm field (hopefully without cows), which would be pretty enough, but I felt the need to kind of set off the area as special. Churches lend automatic dramatic backdrops with altars and stained glass and such. While ours will be far from “dramatic” I’m hoping it will at least be sweet and special.

Since I’m not into revealing all the surprises I have up my bridal sleeve, I’m not going to spell it all out, but if you know me and you see that inspiration picture, you’ve probably guessed what I’m doing. Here are some teaser photos to help even more!

In progress zig zag. I love this stitch, almost as much as my new pinking shears. Something about a perfect sawtooth makes me smile. I also love that lit up “Fix” button. It’s one part of my kick-ass sewing machine that helps a rookie like me do a better job on sewing projects. I will never be able to sew on a more manual machine. Please excuse the dust on the shank, there.

In progress with my favorite little flower pins. I need more of these. They are perfect for rotary cutting because they allow your ruler to lay flat, unlike other pins.

Those last two should totally give away the whole project. I’m just excited to have another task to mark as “Complete” on the Monster To Do List! I’m also completely excited to say that this whole project cost me $3.70. All the fabric was from my stash, scraps left over from past projects. The ribbon was the only purchase I needed!

Wedding Season Has Begun!

You didn’t think ours was the only wedding going on, did you? Of course not! This one was my lovely bestest friend ever (of which there are three). I’m so happy for her and her husband.

Wasn’t their wedding site beautiful? That’s me in the blue dress with the crazy curls on my head.

We’re looking forward to the weddings of two of The Fiance’s siblings, a wedding we can’t make it to this weekend, and probably some more along the way.

Vintage Dress Plans

So, the wedding planning has been put on hold until after my best friend’s marriage at the end of May. I am so excited to see her become a Mrs. and be a part of the celebration. I only hope that I don’t trip and fall walking down the aisle. That is always my greatest fear whenever  I have to appear in front of anyone.

One thing that I did accomplish, though, was to choose a dress. You’ll remember that there were quite a few different options that I was considering. I went back to the idea I originally had, right after our engagement. I’m going to make my dress. Really. I can do it, I promise.

Can you tell that people have been skeptical about this plan?

I couldn’t decide which pattern I liked best, so I ordered these three:

Once I got my hands on the patterns, it was easy to decide. There’s just something more glamourous about the 2902 pattern. Maybe it’s the gloves in the artistic rendering, maybe it’s that it looks to be made of satin. Whatever it is, that will be my wedding dress.

My mom and I went to our local Hancock Fabrics to see what the selection was for fabric. Being that this is prom season, they had an abundance of fancy apparel fabric. What’s better? It was on sale! We deliberated over the rustle of taffeta, the dull satin, the heavy brocades and eventually settled on a shiny, ivory satin with a white hang-free lining. Since I’ll be making this view of the dress, we considered using a different color for the yoke and hem detail. However, we weren’t happy with the selection of green satins (naturally, it would be green!) so I’ll make those from the same ivory satin as the dress.

I’m so excited about this project! I’m really excited that my mom thought it wise to practice with a muslin. When I told her I already had plenty of muslin to make a test run, she said, “What if it’s good enough to wear, though? You’ll never wear a dress made out of muslin.” So, we headed over to the cotton area and decided on some of the Tutti-Fruitti collection to make a test dress. Of course, it was on sale, too!

After I finish the dress project, I’ll have two dresses to wear – one for the ceremony and one for the honeymoon! I may also end up putting those other patterns I bought to good use and make some honeymoon sundresses from them. I kind of like the idea of tooling around on the beach in a sweet vintage dress.

Pretty Papers!

One of the things that I have most looked forward to in all of the wedding planning is the paper products that go along with it. I’m a lover of paper products and office supplies. I’m a geek like that. So is my mom and so is my sister. We loved “Back to School” time because it meant perusing the office supply stores and aisles at the local discount retailer. I still love new pens and papers and have lots of favorite types.

When I started looking at invitations and what I now know are called “suites” I was a little overwhelmed. There are so many different paper options, printing options and pricing options. While letterpress is beautiful and linen papers are elegant, they are also vastly out of my price range. All of the invitation purveyors that I found, online, really had beautiful designs and I loved the idea of five pieces of coordinating paper being sent out to my potential guests, but I didn’t like the price tags that I kept seeing that went along with it.

I thought that my only other choice was to DIY my invitations. I worried that my Photoshop design skills (because I haven’t even really tried to use the other programs in the Adobe suite) would appear elementary and that my home printer would crap out at the eleventh hour. Local print shops were a crapshoot, to me. I could either choose from the old school Lexington printers that would probably be priced more for the Thoroughbred Industry than the backyard wedding industry or I could choose the local Kinko’s. There wasn’t a lot in between.

In a normal old day of browsing the WeddingBee posts, I happened upon a Bee that was discussing Printable Press, an online invitation design company. You pay a design fee, get high resolution PDF files and then the printing is up to you. On the Printable Press website, there are helpful instructions for printing your files at home. Thankfully, they will format your designs specifically for the online printer of your choice, as well. As I was looking through the designs, I worried about not finding one to fit our casual, fun, party vibe. I should not have feared! There is truly something for every style on the site, and custom design is also an option!

I picked out five of my favorites and asked The Fiance which one he liked best. Miracle of all miracles, we agreed on a favorite! In fact, as soon as we each looked at it, we knew. The others would have had to be PRETTY DARN SPECIAL to oust it from its pedestal.

The ordering process was as effortless as can be. This could have been attributable to my newfound non-chalantness (is that a word?) regarding all things wedding. However, I think it’s probably most due to the fact that Printable Press has GREAT customer service in their artists/designers/business owners. I loved the whole process and felt that Kimi totally got the vibe I was looking for. She was great to work with, from answering my questions to delivering the full-res files WAY earlier than I expected!

The next step is to print the invitation and the reception card. I’ll use OvernightPrints.com, which I’ve used before and been pleased with (more on that, later, in these totally out-of-order wedding posts!).

In the meantime, though, can you guess which design we went for at Printable Press?

The Dress That Would Have Been

I purchased this dress at a local bridal shop. The shop was going out of business and selling the dresses that they had in stock. I got this beautiful dress for much less than full price (listed on the tag as $975). It really is a beauty. Anyone interested? It is Casa Blanca Bridal style 1887, ivory and size 18. I will sell for $650 or best offer.