The most dramatic elements of Tiffany’s custom wedding dress design are the gorgeous collar and neckline. Once the shoulder seams and cut-in-one sleeves were finished, it was time to get started creating them!

Much of what makes a couture dress beautiful (and expensive) is hidden deep inside the layers. I love sharing “behind the seams” peeks into how flat fabric can be transformed. Thanks for following along!

The Experiments

As you may remember from Tiffany’s sketches and/or mockups, a dramatic collar and open neckline will frame Tiffany’s gorgeous face and neck. In order to determine the right methods to achieve this, I worked through some experiments and samples.

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Hey ya’ll! Hanging in there?

In case you are new here, I’m Brooks Ann Camper! I first learned to sew as a young adult in professional workrooms and have been creating custom garments for individuals ever since. After a costuming internship at the Yale School of Drama, I earned a Masters Degree in Costume Production and past jobs include sewing for Broadway productions such as Wicked and Mama Mia!, creating unique dramatic pieces for clients such as Bernadette Peters, Felicia Rashaad, Kristin Chenoweth, the Rockettes, the Muppets… just to name a very few. I now create custom couture wedding dresses (while blogging the process) and I teach my unique methods of custom sewing and patternmaking online.

Learn more in my interview on the Love To Sew podcast.

For the first half of March, I put everything aside to focus on creating a gorgeous wedding dress for a bride named Claire. (That’s a peek at the mockup dress behind me, which seriously might be my favorite ever!). Checking wedding dressmaking off my To-Do List was going to allow me to get back to finalizing epic projects that have been in-the-works since the end of 2018. 

Then the world turned upside down.

I’m doing okay. In some ways, I’ve been unknowingly training for this. Not only do my child-free husband and I already work solo, we live with our 15-year-old coonhound. To support him as best we can, we took our last vacation in October and then cleared our schedules indefinitely to have at least one of us home every few hours. …

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After Tiffany’s first mockup fitting, I was ready to use the edited patterns and original polyester mockup dress to create a second mockup dress for a second mockup fitting. As I sorted through the photos to create this blog post, I realized that everything looked very similar to what I’ve shared before! So it’s kinda Déjà Vu for Mockup #2!

Second Time’s a Charm!

Since there were so many tweaks made to the bodice during the first mockup fitting, I needed to completely recut and create a new mockup top for Tiffany to try on in Round Two….

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The very first fitting is always a fun part of the custom process. The dress the bride tries on in a first fitting is not the real dress- it is a mockup version. This means that you can play around with changes in a completely no-risk way! The custom design was created from scratch and the custom pattern was created from scratch so I love that the mockup process eliminates any pressure for prior perfection. The goal of the mockup fitting is to experiment with improvements and to play!

When Tiffany arrived at the studio, she beamed with excitement seeing the mockup dress on the form. She couldn’t wait to try it on!

And when she saw herself in the mirror for the first time, her smile said it all!…

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After the first drafts of Tiffany’s custom patterns were created, it was time to test my experiments by making a ‘test dress’ using inexpensive materials. This dress and this stage of the process are what I call the mockup (often also referred to as the muslin or toile). Though I sketched the design onto Tiffany’s silhouette and created the custom patterns on a Size-Tiffany body double, working through mockups is a risk-free way for myself and the bride to communicate design and fitting ideas in 3D on her body, while evolving and improving upon the original information. I absolutely adore this part of the custom process.

A mockup takes away all the pressure to get things right on the first try (or second or third…). Cutting, ripping, pinning, marking, practicing, and drawing all over the test dress is its purpose (and is really fun). You have complete freedom to make a mess (without fear of messing anything up) while discovering the answers to all your questions. With the knowledge and practice gained from the mockup process, the actual dress comes together with lots of confidence….

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