Creating the Veil

I had offered to make my future daughter-in-law's veil. I considered this a privilege
and an honor. Of course, the process of making the veil began to take a life of its own. In other words.. it was "Make the Veil .... take five". Sometimes, even simple things create their own challenges. I will look back on this and smile (as I am already doing).

The design of the veil was actually quite simple. It was to be two layers, the longest being waist-length. All was to be gathered into a comb. Keena, (Kendra's Mom) and I had gone out to look at a few veils, and we had a good sense of what was needed. So, I drafted a rough paper pattern which was basically the rounded corner of the oblong oval. I folded the tulle, and cut out the rounded corner. Of course, I soon realized I had folded the tulle wrong, and now I had a curve rising out of the center back. Drat... silly mistake. So, on to veil #2, and thankfully, I had purchased extra tulle. Well, it must have been the lack of sleep, or possibly still some jet lag, but I managed to make the same mistake again. I had just folded the tulle slightly different the second time. So.. off to the fabric store, and buy more tulle. The color wasn't exact, but at this point, I decided I was simply going to make a prototype.

I was having a lot of fun with my new sewing machine (a Brother QC1000). We wanted an edging of silver around the edge of the veil, so I experimented with a lot of the the fancy stitches. It was great fun. In the end however, Kendra chose one of the simple edgings, which was basically a narrow zig-zag stitch.


I then folded the oblong over to achieve the two lengths of the veil, and stitched a basting thread close to the foldline.


I gathered this end and basted it quickly onto the comb so we could try the sample on at the final fitting.





If you look in the prior blog entry, you will see my prototype on Kendra. It worked, and she made her choices with regards to edging, length, etc. So, now I went and bought the right color tulle, and cut out Veil #4. It was fine, until I started pressing it, and noticed that there was a flaw, a hole, in the middle of the piece. Veil #5 became the 'keeper'. Everything worked just fine with this one.

Here you can see me attaching the beaded trim to the top of the veil.


My mom sewed all the crystals onto the veil, which I feel brings the generations together more.



In the end, the veil was beautiful. You will see pictures of it during the wedding in an upcoming entry.