London Life: Week 5 - Wedding Dress Stress

That's another one finito... nearly half way there!

Monday:

The week took off as usual, the routine tidy up and some embroidery. I was very easily persuaded to go to Nando's for lunch which was delicious as per usual, followed with more embroidery. Then the madness began, that evening, myself and Katie were basically tested to see if we would be fit for the task at hand, by sewing a small sample of the lace onto fabric, which they were happy with, so then we began hand sewing the lace (that we had cut the previous week) onto the wedding dress. YES you read that correctly, I was physically there, with my hands on this custom made couture GILES wedding dress, so we did that for about an hour before we finished for the day and stress levels for rocketing, all the responsibility. A simple prick of a needle and a drop of blood away from ruining this incredibly expensive dress.

London Skyline at 4am

Tuesday:

Tuesday, we were back on the dress again for the whole day, spending seven and a half hours working on the masterpiece, stress levels were beginning to ease. It was actually really therapeutic, once I got the hang of it and it was nice to chat to some of the staff from Giles, that were working on it also, finding out about their jobs and experiences.

Wednesday:

Wednesday morning I wasn't working on the dress, as they working on an awkwardly positioned part of it, so there wasn't space. So I spent the morning on a fabric hunt, starting off on Berwick Street, just off Oxford Street, trying to match a tiny sample of plain black netting. Over ten fabric shops later, I had a bag full of samples and no perfect match yet. From there I went to Goldhawk Street, near Shepherd's Bush, to search many more shops and collect many more samples. By then they were ready for me to get back to sewing the dress, so I made my way back to studio and spent the rest of the day working on dress, another four and a half hours with my hands on the gown. Still can't believe I was let near it!

Only recently had my first one of these, obsessed!

Thursday:

So then Thursday, we were back at the dress, it was our last day to get it finished. The professional hand sewers weren't in, so there were three of us left to had the final touches, no pressure!! A few hours sewing the final few pieces of lace on and then we had to move it from the mannequin to the table, which was a procedure and a half. We then sewed the weights into the back of the train to help the train drag behind the dress and then sewed the facing shut. Back onto the mannequin then, where we lint rolled the dress and set it up to be steamed, thank God I wasn't responsible for that, my heart would be in my mouth, I think everyone felt the same, no one really wanted to have to do it, for fear of the unmentionable. Another seven hours on the dress, totalling to approx. twenty hours on this custom wedding dress, which unfortunately we never found out how much it was worth, but in the region of £20,000 we think! Absolute madness!

Street Art - East London

Friday:

So the wedding dress was delivered that morning at half seven to the bride, the day before her wedding. It was quite a calm day, in the sense that the weight of responsibility was lifted. I spent the morning running errands. Firstly, I brought leather to the laser cutters and brought some leather that had already been cut, back to the studio and we began cleaning that. Then I had to go to London Trimmings to get some lightweight zips and after that I went back to the laser cutters to the collect the remaining leather that was cut. We continued to the clean the leather, quite a monotonous job, but somebody's got to do it. After a while I brought leather and patterns to Forma Leather and then I had to bring a jacket to a studio in Soho, we were let off an hour early so by the time I got back it was time to go. From there I went to Paddington to get a train to Reading for one of my best friend's birthday weekend. The signals were down and there was no trains departing which resulted in a bit of chaos but eventually I got there and we began a very exciting weekend.

Saturday:

So after giving Blaithin her birthday present, we headed into Reading town to get a few essentials for the celebrations that night. A dress for Blaithin, decorations, prosecco, snacks etc etc. When we got back to the house, I decorated and we began the preparations. Drinks were flowing and we headed to Treehouse for the night.

Love Travelling

Sunday:

Sunday morning we woke up, a bit worse for wear, most of the day was spent on the couch until we finally got up and went into town for some food and the hurling semi-final between Waterford and Kilkenny. I then left the girls and made my way back to London.

That's all for this week, let me know what you think! Follow me on my other social media sights and give my Facebook Page a like: Barry Taylor Design

Thanks,

Barry T.

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