Wedding sewing part four: something old, something new, something that breaks your machine with glue

(This post was written on the 18th, and edited and posted on Patreon on the 20th. On the 19th, I was busy getting married!)

Needless to say, the power outages messed up my sewing timeline. What messed it up even more, though, is my choice of fabric for my bodysuit. It was advertised as "lace," but it's not. It's mesh with some designs on it. Perhaps they figured "lace" was a better term for it than "embroidered mesh," since the sequins and glitter and tiny beads were neither embroidered nor even sewn on. The entirety of this fabric is either really loose mesh, or a pile of glue. I sewed a couple of samples to make sure it would even sew on my machine, and to adjust the settings properly for it. The samples went well with a somewhat short stitch length and medium tension. I tested to make sure my machine could sew through two layers, I tested to make sure it could sew through this fabric and the more dense stretch mesh I'm using to back it up together, and I tested each part of the fabric (mesh alone, beads, sequins), and everything turned out fine. So I moved on to the actual piece.

First thing's first: darts! I sewed one beautiful dart in the back piece of the top. Then I started the other one. The machine was not a fan. It stopped sewing properly and utterly shredded the material. I kind of wish it had simply stopped sewing properly, so I wouldn't have had to recut that piece and redo the other dart that had sewn perfectly the first time, but c'est la vie. Every time I tried to sew this piece since then, the machine was acting up. Once I started on my pants and noticed that the needle wasn't threaded right, I realized that's probably why the sewing machine wouldn't sew my later tries, but I didn't want to risk it so I continued sewing the entire bodysuit by hand.

Now, to be clear, by this point I had also finished my fiance's dress except for the buttons. I wish I had actually messed up my machine earlier, before the first power outage, because when I thought that I would be able to use the sewing machine for everything, I had 0 motivation to try sewing anything by hand. If I had known I would have to hand-sew the bodysuit anyway, I would have been sewing for the over 2 days that we were without power. Instead, I waited. I cut out some pieces, once it became clear that the power would be out for a long time. I had been planning on waiting until the dress was fully sewn, so that I wouldn't have cut but unsewn bits and pieces of multiple projects out at a time. But since I realized I didn't really have time to wait, I just pinned the pieces together so that the dress was in two pieces (bodice + sleeves and skirt), even if both of those pieces had pins sticking out and weren't structurally sound.

Once the power came back on for about a day, I quickly did the rest of the sewing to make the dress one piece with no pins or raw edges. And then I did all of the samples and unhooked my thread with the darts. At this point, I started hand-sewing the bodysuit, complaining the entire time. I'll make a separate post about that pattern and the materials I used later. When the power went out again, I was able to keep sewing, and I even brought the pieces that surround the bra cups to school to sew them in between classes. And I was sewing it for almost a week--and I only had a week. I'm writing this (this paragraph anyway, I'll probably not finish tonight) the night before my wedding, after having just finished it less than an hour ago. It'll be midnight in a few minutes.

Fortunately, I wasn't in this alone. I'm unlucky in that I don't have anyone in my life that's better at sewing than I am, so I don't have people (in person) to ask for help like I do in most other subjects. But my wonderful fiancee helped me wherever they could. They assembled and cut out the pattern for my pants, as well as the fabric, while I was working on my bodysuit. I taught them how to sew buttons and then they sewed all but one (the one I did to show them how) of the buttons on their dress. They also cut out the buttonholes after I sewed them, and they'll be cutting out the buttonholes on my pants too because it turns out they're actually better at that than I am. I'm just still caught up on the fact that they essentially learned how to sew just for this. It's one thing to decide to sew our outfits (and make our rings) for the wedding because I like sewing (and soldering) and wanted to save money. It's a whole other kind of romantic to learn how to sew in order to help me sew for the wedding because they could see that I needed help. Sometimes I think I'm getting a strictly better deal in the whole marriage thing.

Sewing the pants would have been super easy, because pants are generally super easy, but the fit was terrible. The waist is a good size, but the hips were a bit too loose and the lower legs were gigantic. I ended up having to both cut off some of the sides (and bottom, of course) and make darts under my butt--the way the pattern was designed, it's like they expect your butt to slightly go out from your waist but then just slowly taper uniformly until your ankles. Mine, like most, isn't like that, so I had a lot of altering to do. At the beginning I also altered the pattern a tiny bit just to remove the pockets from the front--I would rather have them, but unfortunately I just didn't have the time. I barely finished in time as it is. I'm not actually even done--I'm doing the hem in the morning.

The bodysuit is also technically not finished, although I've done all that I'm going to do before the wedding. I finished up the top, but I didn't close the crotch or put elastic on the leg holes (hole?), because I decided I didn't have time. I'm glad I didn't, too, because now that I've made it, I'm actually too scared to step into it as recommended for fear of breaking something. I'm going to have to stick my arms up and ask my sister to help me put it on tomorrow.