Repair and Restore A Dream Wedding Gown

The bride-to-be found her dream dress! HooRay! Unfortunately, it was the only dress of this style left and it had been used as a floor model for several months. The back Illusion fabric had been handled roughly and was now torn and worn. I saw opportunities to make this dress wearable but many details had to go our way. The bride was onboard with my process and I set out to make the first step happen. First, she sent it to the cleaners so we didn’t have any new surprises crop up.

There were no new issues after cleaning. Here you can clearly see how the button strand had been ripped off and several areas of the Illusion had shredded. There was no way to “fix” these holes without the repair showing so I did the scary thing and cut a chunk of the fabric out to use as a sample. Onward to my first challenge-finding a fabric match.

Can you see the chunk of fabric from the dress laying on the bolt of fabric? This was the MOST spot on fabric match I’ve ever been witness to! I took this to be a very good sign.

This was the next step-laying in the new fabric in such a way as to make the seam completely invisible. I cut away the old fabric, lay in the fresh fabric and pinned freely and frequently. Once I had a path plotted, I used the tiniest of hand stitches and carefully worked around every little angle of the lace. I left plenty of fabric down the center back and kept the buttons and loops hanging free.

After the first fitting. Since I was already moving the lace to accommodate the new fabric, it wasn’t difficult to also shorten the waist of the dress to more perfectly fit across the bride’s back. Though it looks very wonky, the line of safety pins are where the buttons will need to attach. The very top buttons still need to be released in this photo.

To more accurately imitate the curve of her back, I pinned each section of the bodice back to a pillow. This really helped to get the lace and button closure to lay correctly as I prepared to hand stitch them in place.

I kept the buttons on the strand they were on because the spacing of them was already perfect. After shortening the strand and counting (several times!) to make sure I had the correct amount, I wrapped fresh fabric around the strand and started stitching everything in place.

SO MUCH HAND STITCHING! It looks confusing but since the safety pins held everything in place so nicely, it was just a matter of patience and carefully taking it one stitch at a time.

Finished! And closing across the back perfectly for the first time since before she has had the dress. She was beyond happy and it was wonderful to see her so grateful and relieved that our gamble had paid off.