Wedding: Embellished Sash

Embellished Bridal Sash

Brandin wanted a flower sash for her dress.  She gave me the store-bought sash and a length of double satin ribbon.  She needed the flower portion removed from the elastic band/snap belt and attached to the ribbon so her seamstress could attach the sash to the dress.  The back of her wedding dress was corseted so the ribbon needed to be attached to the side seams, leaving the corset untouched.  

The flower section -as you see above- is made up of 3 fabric flowers attached to a faux leather background.  I broke the stitching along the edges of the faux leather which allowed me to slip the elastic bands out - I threw them away.  I tried to sew the ribbon in place exactly like the elastic belt was  but my machine kept catching the ribbon and fraying it.  In the end I used Fabri-Tac fabric glue to glue the two pieces together.  It worked beautifully and as you can see below the result looks like it came that way. 

You can see here how the ribbon and the flower section are attached.

You didn't think I let it go that easy did you?  You know that I couldn't just leave it alone....it needed embellishing.  I didn't think it was dressy enough for a wedding.  First, I tried adding pearls but the way the flowers were designed I couldn't get it to look the way I wanted it to.  I considered adding hot fix rhinestones but if I didn't like the result I had no way of replacing the sash.  

One day while Brandin was over working on the silk-screened votives (tutorial to come) I decided to try adding flowers to the sash. I used Tim Hotz's Tattered Florals die and my Vagabond to cut petals from a shimmery organza I had laying around and the pink crepe fabric that Brandin had originally bought for the bridesmaid's skirts.  The skirts didn't look like she wanted so she went in another direction.  That left a ton of fabric for me to use and you will see it show up in other wedding projects.  

 I snipped a tiny hole in the center of each petal and added tiny white stamens to each little flower.  The stamens are double ended so I simply folded them over and used 2 or 3 sets (of 2) per flower (ending with 4-6 white bulb-shaped stamens per flower).  I shaped the flowers using a needle and thread by simply taking random, tiny stitches near the stamen (center) of each flower and gathering a little here and there as I went.  This is all a judgement call and not a rigid, specific instruction.  When I was happy with each flower I used white floral tape to hold the stamen and flower together.  The stamen-stem (covered in white floral tape) was trimmed off and the flowers were attached to the sash with judicious and careful use of Fabri-Tac fabric glue.  Fabri-Tac can be difficult to work with and it will leave a watermark/oily stain if you get it on the  front of the fabric or use too much and it seeps through to the front.  So be careful and use as little as possible.  "Just a dab will do ya" definitely applies here. 

  I love the way the newly embellished sash looked on the dress.   

I realize I didn't take step-out photos of the flowers, if you are interested in a photo tutorial for this project let me know by leaving a comment here or shooting me an email.

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