Limited Offer: A Freeview of Skirt Skills, my Intro to Custom Sewing eCourse!
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 […]
Constructing Tiffany’s Wedding Dress: Skirt & Midriff
After our 2nd mockup fitting, it was finally time to get started making the custom dress that Tiffany would wear on her wedding day! Having snapped literally hundreds of photos while constructing Tiffany’s wedding dress in preparation for our basted fitting, I’m breaking the process down into several parts for sharing with all of you. […]
Déjà Vu: Tiffany’s Mockup Dress #2!
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 […]
Tiffany’s First Mockup Fitting (and Pattern Corrections)!
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 […]
Making Tiffany’s First Mockup
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 […]
Draping and Drafting Tiffany’s Custom Wedding Dress Patterns
After turning my new tiny dress form into a replica of my bride, it was time to create the custom-fit patterns for Tiffany’s future wedding dress. With the custom sketch of the dress design and the Size-Tiffany dress form as my guides, I experimented my way through a first draft of paper patterns. There are essentially […]
A Custom Tool for Tiffany: Creating her Petite Body-Double Dress Form
In my previous post, I introduced a new custom bride named Tiffany to the blog! I also shared about our design process and how I created a custom coqui to sketch a wedding dress to fit her unique body and style. I’ve reached a point in my career where I mostly only accept commissions that […]
New Bridal Blog Series: Tiffany!
The bridal blog series is back! In each bridal blog series, you meet a new bride and I slowly post-by-post recount the process and share the behind-the-seams story of creating her one-of-a-kind custom couture wedding dress from start-to-finish. To keep the dress a surprise for the groom and guests (and because my blogging style is […]
A Dior Quilt Square Surprise
Though you may be itching for the beginning of a new bridal blog series (me too!), I recently worked on an unusual and special project that I really wanted to share. I made a Dior-inspired square for a surprise “Couture Quilt”! First off, let’s establish that I am a dressmaker, not a quilter. I have […]
