Tag Archives: do it yourself

[engaged in the D] How I made my own lace wedding dress

by Steph | 2 Comments

Welcome guest blogger Katherine back to LoveintheD! To read her first guest post, click here. Curious about how Katherine made her own wedding dress for her Detroit wedding? Read on for her dress story!

When I told people about my intentions to make my own wedding dress, despite never having made any kind of dress ever in my life, they thought I was a little nuts. They said totally logical things like “I would be scared!” and “what will you do if it doesn’t work?” and “that sounds stressful and complicated!”

“I just don’t want you to be in a panic a week before the wedding because you have nothing to wear…” said my sweet, and extremely reasonable, fiancee.

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Despite it being a very large project, I can honestly say that the wedding dress was the least stressful of my many DIY projects for the wedding (aside: just because you’ve seen other people screen print, that does not mean you are ready to screen print your wedding invites). One of the reasons it was so low-stress is that I started very early. Another is that my wedding dress was never going to be exactly “traditional.” So go ahead and get that big white cake of a dress out of your head right now.

I actually didn’t set out to make my own wedding dress, and first found a seller on Etsy who made dresses that I thought might fit my criteria (eco-friendly, not white, dripping with sentimentality, LACE, budget-friendly) but one night while pursuing my options and dreaming I suddenly thought: “Wait. I can do that!”

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Left: Dress base made of a slip and a loose skirt dyed green / Right: Early sample layout for dress that was ultimately abandoned as too busy 

My dress (much like the ones I liked on Etsy) uses a slip as a base, which eliminated a lot (though not all) of the complicated fitting process. I also relied heavily on trusted friends with more experience than me to consult me. Garment creation is often more complicated than it looks on the outside, so it was great to be able to call friends and ask: “Will this work?” Sometimes, the answer was: “Not exactly…” and I had to modify my plan slightly.

I did not use a pattern. Instead, I collected the pieces (shout out to Amy at Smallcraft for helping me get lace!) the dress would be made of and worked on the layout by pinning them together over and over again.

By far the most tedious portion was the lace sewing. Most lace needs to be sewn by hand in order to avoid unattractive bunching. I actually love hand-sewing, so this wasn’t a huge problem for me. I also found that a lot of wedding planning feels rushed, so it was great (for me) to have some forced downtime making slow and steady progress. It felt very romantic! However, if you are thinking of doing this yourself, be forewarned that I probably clocked at least 50 hours with a needle and thread in my hand.

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My finished dress pictured with my partner Chelsea’s dress

Readers: Have you ever sewn your own clothing? Would you consider making your own wedding dress?

Forging wedding bands, forging a new path together (Part Two)

by Steph | 3 Comments

Today’s Engaged in the D blog post is by Christopher Holt, who is engaged to Melissa Damaschke. Check out Part One here and read about their engagement story here.

Jewelry is delicate and precious. However, I’ve come to admire the brute force that goes into its making. It’s a bit like childbirth: there’s grunting, careful monitoring, blood, placenta, the force of contractions and labor, the smacking of a newborn bum, crying and all that, but in the end you have this precious delicate life. Minus the blood and a few other things there is an element of brutality in making jewelry.

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How do you think the ring gets that nice round shape? You hammer the sucker. You hammer it into that ring-like shape and hammer the ends as close together as possible. Did they get out of line with each other? Put the metal in the vice and tap the sides ’till they’re even with each other. Then repeat. Then you solder the ends together. Now this piece of metal that once looked like, well just a piece of tiny metal, is starting to look more and more like an actual ring. I’ve seen ultrasound images of fetuses in the womb and thought, “Ok. Where the hell is the baby?”  Not until later does the freakish cluster of cells become recognizably human.  Up to this point, one might ask, “Ok. Where the hell is the ring?”

We  now arrive at the point where Melissa took my ring-fetus and hammered it into a ring-baby.

Our Mistress of Metallurgy introduced us to this thick metal rod that was tapered to a point. It was a little shorter than my forearm. Using her demonstration ring, she slid it ‘round the tapered the end and wedged it a few inches onto the rod.  Ring sizes were engraved up and down this tool. She demonstrated what we had to do and Melissa was first.

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With the grace of a ballet dancer, the muscle of a valkyrie, and the focus of a laser-beam, Melissa hammered my ring into existence. She slid it off the rod and I slid it onto my finger. I shook my hand wildly to see if it would fall off. It flew across the store. This act was repeated about four times before the ring fit my finger comfortably.

Upon my turn, I raised the tool with my left hand and the hammer with my right.  Like the Greek god Hephaestus, I brought my hammer down upon the ring not once, not twice, but several times. Many, many times in fact.

Repeatedly.

Until finally, the gold and silver that were once divorced, were once again united in a perfect, perpetual circle, soldered together by the suave hunk that is marrying Melissa Damaschke.

We spent the next 10-20 minutes sanding and polishing the rings giving them a slightly grey finish. (Neither of us wanted anything too shiny or glossy).  Julie permitted us to use the photo set-up she has to take the picture you see here.  When all was said and done we were there for about five hours with a break for lunch.  We can’t thank Julie Sanford of Studio JSD enough for her patient guidance, talent, and encouragement.  If there are any couples considering doing such an activity together for their rings, we highly recommend doing it.

And we didn’t have to forge our rings in Mordor.

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Readers: What do you think of the idea of making rings for one another as an engaged couple? How would you design your own unique ring?

Forging wedding bands, forging a new path together (Part One)

by Steph | 3 Comments

This week’s Engaged in the D guest post is by Christopher Holt, who is engaged to Melissa Damaschke. Read about their engagement story here.

Part One

Melissa doesn’t have an engagement ring. Not because I’m a cheap jerk but because 1) She doesn’t wear much jewelry in the first place and 2) She takes issue with the diamond industry.

So, instead of buying wedding bands, we thought it’d be more meaningful and rewarding to make each other’s rings. Now, by “make” I don’t mean “have someone make it for us.” Rather, I make her wedding band and she makes mine. Melissa was quick to research our options and found the only place in Michigan that offers couples the opportunity to do just, which is Studio JSD located in Grand Haven.  Julie Sanford, owner of Studio JSD, was more than accommodating to our purpose. In fact, we were able to have the entire studio and her attention all to ourselves. Julie makes all kinds of jewelry and we can’t recommend her and her artwork enough. I shall call her our Mistress of Metallurgy.

Melissa’s ring carries a second layer of meaning. Her parents divorced when she was 13 thereby rendering their wedding rings moot. However, they had the forethought (or respect) to keep them. Melissa’s mom is remarried.  After her dad died a few years ago, Melissa took to wearing his wedding ring on occasion. While it’s not really her style, it still holds sentiment. Despite having each of her parents’ defunct wedding rings, she didn’t know what to do with them.  It wasn’t until the night before we left for Grand Haven that it occurred to her that she should melt them down and recast them into her own wedding ring.  She got the OK from her mom and brother (out of respect for their feelings) and the decision was made.

My ring would be cast from new material. Melissa would make mine and I would make hers. We agreed that the other would approve of the ring each step of the way so there would be no surprises.

Our Mistress of Metallurgy guided us step-by-step through the entire process. Given the fact that Melissa’s ring was to come from two existing pieces of jewelry, my tasks required a little more time, so the three of us started on the rings together. I admit I was uneasy about sawing the diamond off of my future mother-in-law’s gold wedding ring. However, as I was doing that, Melissa was busy removing/tapping/bending/hammering out the small stones that were epoxied into her dad’s silver ring. This put things into perspective and I proceeded with confidence.

Hammers and saws are fun but blow-torches are more fun.

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We took our turns melting the other’s metals into liquid form inside a crucible.  Melting-down metals is nothing new of course but if you have never altered the physical properties of a piece of metal before, you’re missing out.  Sure, there’d be soldering involved later on, but in this case we take something recognizable, admired, worn, and cherished, and reduce it to a scalding hot blister. At risk of sounding overdramatic:  these rings were on the fingers of two people figuratively inside a crucible.  And now, some twenty years later, these same rings are literally inside a crucible only to experience a very different outcome.  There’s something even more profound going on here.  Melissa hasn’t come out and said it directly, but there’s the clear suggestion of forging a new beginning; a way to acknowledge and learn from the past and how she can perceive herself and future decisions in relation to that. She is the sole owner of her destiny.

Melissa is my sweet, sweet, Nitzschean Übermensch. Or ÜberFrau.

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Melted into small tiny rods the size of pretzels a president might choke on while watching a football game, these metals lack all the glamour and emotion associated with their purpose. There is a mechanical device – not unlike a penny stretching machine – through which these tiny rods are cranked and thereby stretched.  We crank our metal rods through this device several times.  Sometimes, however, the rods resist our efforts and must be taken to be blowtorched. This does something to the atoms inside the metal that makes it easier to crank them through the machine.  When the metal is glowing red from the blowtorch, we pick-up the metal with tweezers and drop it into a bowl of cool water. This makes a sound not unlike the one you might imagine is produced when a portal to another dimension seizes shut.

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The anvil we used was not manufactured by the Acme Company, nor was it dropped on anyone’s head. It was satisfying, though, to lay the rod (or in my case, two rods) of metal and tap the texture into it.  Melissa is an environmentalist – a tree hugger. So, for my ring,  I asked her to create a texture similar to tree bark. She liked the idea so much, that that’s how I textured hers.  We used hammers designed for such work, carefully holding the metal in place and even more carefully not hammering our fingers.

Want to check out the rest of Chris & Melissa’s ring-making process and the beautiful end results? Part Two is coming next week!