My sister's wedding dress began with a sketch she had drawn, and her idea of a gradient orange from light to dark. I knew just which hand-dyer to look at, as she has 60 different gradient shades in 2 different fingering weight bases. So I was able to choose just the perfect colorway, Apricot, in Black Trillium's Lilt gradient. I had used her Lilt for our first Ficstitches Yarns Kit Club last year, and knew the silk blend would provide lovely drape. I was at Black Sheep Gathering a couple weeks after my sister got engaged, where I bought 3 gradient kits of yarn and coordinating beads from Bead Biz.
We had found a sewing pattern of a similar shape to her sketch, but in the end I only used the waistband pattern piece as a reference to get started. Once I had completed the waistband, in a stitch I felt would give the core of the dress some structure, I told my sister to choose how I should proceed.
Having designed several garments, I knew that I could choose one lace pattern and shape it to fit her, OR I could try piecing together different flowers, leaves, and doily patterns in the Irish Crochet style -- which I had never done before, but had been wanting to try. With complete confidence in me, my sister told me to go for the crazy lace, although by then, I only had 2 months until the big day.
Since I did not know a lot about Irish Crochet, I started with my friend Kathy White's The Go-To Book Of Irish Crochet as well as a few other motif and Japanese doily books,. Before committing to motif lace, I made up a few pieces in the lightest shade of yarn, and began stitching them together. I knew I was on the right track when I realized that the pieces I had already would be perfect for one side of the bodice, and I just kept going.
I loved the idea of following a bunch of other people's patterns for motifs and seeing how I could piece them together, especially looking for patterns of leaves and flowers that would lay flat to create a smoother fabric. With a fall wedding and shades of orange yarn, my sister especially wanted to include lots of leaves, but I also found that doilies and snowflakes worked well.
I soon decided that as long as I was going to do this, I should make every single motif different! I ended up with 8 different books as reference, was soon creating variations of what I found in the books, and eventually made the motifs up as I went along. I learned a lot about how different designers start and write their circular motif patterns, and which ones worked best for me.
Having 3 small balls of each of the 5 shades in the colorway made it easy to crochet on the go (and I mean everywhere). I would work up a motif from each end of each ball for up to 6 motifs in a shade, leaving them attached to the balls to avoid wasting yarn. Then I spread them out when I was home, see how they might fit together, and start pinning them to the slip on her dressform, which I had my sister adjust to her own measurements. I was constantly surprised how well the shaping worked as I connected the random pieces and shapes together, filling in the spaces between with interconnected chain loops.I figured the dress would be as long as it was going to be, until I ran out of yarn, or time. Whichever came first.
After several years of needing to write patterns for everything I make, allowing myself the freedom to try various patterns, play with how to make it all fit together, and see it turn out even better than I had imagined was remarkable. We made a few changes from my sister's original sketch due to the limitations of working with yarn, but she certainly seemed happy with the results. This was certainly a labor of love, but I hope to find reasons to do more of this type of designing in the future, freeform rather than structured.
For more pictures of the finished dress, check out yesterday's post. I have been told that the photos do not do it justice, so this month, "Aurora's Dawn" is Going On Tour! The dress was on display a couple weeks ago in the Bead Biz booth at Madrona, last weekend in the Black Trillium booth at Stitches West, in a couple weeks we will be doing a Trunk Show/Book Signing/Make'n'Take at Happy Knits in Portland during the Rose City Yarn Crawl, and we will have booths at various PNW shows later this year.
Aurora's Dawn- 3 months, 108 different motifs, 100's of tiny beads and buttons, and 1800 yards of fingering weight gradient yarn on size C and E hooks.
My sister Aurora was named for the Goddess of the Dawn, so it only made sense that she chose to be married in the colors of the sunrise as she celebrated the dawning of a new life with her Guy.
For years we have agreed that if she got married again, I would crochet her a dress. Afterall, she sewed my wedding dress (nearly 20 years ago), and once I started designing garments, it just made sense.
But when she got engaged last June, she gave me just three months to not only design, but create the fabric for her one-of-a-kind 'modern Irish' crocheted lace dress.
Given more time, I might have chosen a lace weight yarn to create even more delicate lace as I imagined for a wedding dress. However, the Black Trillium Fibres fingering weight Gradient Yarn in Apricot turned out to be the perfect thing to create a fabric that gradually shifted in color from palest yellow to the deep orange of the waistband and bottom edge.
I have played with freeform crochet in the past, but not in lace. Inspired by designing Ailee's Wedding Shawl for our first Ficstitches Yarns crochet Kit Club last year, I wanted to explore the technique of joining separate motifs like Irish Crochet was a great excuse to go through the books of motifs and doilies in my collection and try all sorts of different patterns to see how they worked up. With a fall wedding, my sister wanted lots of leaves in her dress, so I made all sorts of leaf motifs, and chose doily patterns with "pineapples" which also reminded us of leaves.
Once I got started, I decided that every motif should be different. I was worried that so many different patterns would be distracting. But as they were joined together they blended into a solid fabric.
As I got closer to the bottom, I added beads to many of the flowers and the bottom edging. I wanted to form a flower garden along the bottom front, inspired by the flowers my sister's new husband has been growing. I included sunflowers for my sister and lilies for her husband, and was very pleased with the final result.
Special Thanks to Guy Holtzman for all of the photos in this post.
My sister's wedding dress began with a sketch she had drawn, and her idea of a gradient orange from light to dark. I knew just which hand-dyer to look at, as she has 60 different gradient shades in 2 different fingering weight bases. So I was able to choose just the perfect colorway, Apricot, in Black Trillium's Lilt gradient. I had used her Lilt for our first Ficstitches Yarns Kit Club last year, and knew the silk blend would provide lovely drape. I was at Black Sheep Gathering a couple weeks after my sister got engaged, where I bought 3 gradient kits of yarn and coordinating beads from Bead Biz. 
Since I did not know a lot about Irish Crochet, I started with my friend Kathy White's The Go-To Book Of Irish Crochet as well as a few other motif and Japanese doily books,. Before committing to motif lace, I made up a few pieces in the lightest shade of yarn, and began stitching them together. I knew I was on the right track when I realized that the pieces I had already would be perfect for one side of the bodice, and I just kept going.
