One of the most stressful things about planning my wedding thus far has been choosing the bridesmaids dresses. I didn't want to be that bride who makes her bridesmaids spend tons of money on ugly-ass dresses they'd never wear again. I also didn't want my ladies to be uncomfortable or look like they work the street corner, (I've seen enough pictures of this unfortunate result too many times to know that it happens easily,) and wanted them to like their dresses. Too much to ask? For a while, I thought so.
Until I found this dress. There are several people on Etsy who make and sell these especially for bridesmaids so I contacted one of them. Long story short, they were too expensive, especially for a dress that has such a simple construction and is made out of jersey fabric.
So we decided to try to make them ourselves. I found an awesome green fabric made out of bamboo(!) so I got 4 yards. I followed a tutorial one of my bridesmaids found online and voila! Three days later, my sister was in her very own homemade infinity dress. It looks way better on her than does on me. (Frown.)
The tutorial I followed was this one, but I found this one later that I think would have been super helpful had I found it earlier. The fabric is really stretchy which is awesome to wear but can be a pain to sew and cut correctly. The second site explains all of this in great detail so I like it.
Throughout the process, I also noticed that 4 straps can be cut from the amount of fabric that is required to make the dress which means that by adding another yard and a half, 2 dresses can be made from 5 1/2 yards of fabric instead of just one from 4 yards. Just an FYI for all you sustainably minded folks out there who might want a second dress for some odd reason.
And the cost savings? Even after splurging on expensive bamboo fabric, this dress cost half as much as the ones that we were thinking about buying on Etsy. It pays to be crafty!
