Edwardian Wedding Dress: all the beads

First, thank you for following along this far! Not only did this dress project take longer than a usual project, my blog posts about it have also taken four times longer than usual.
February 6, I was finished with basting the lace appliques in place and ready to start with my bead design. It was tough to get started - I'd never done a beading project this large before, and with seed beads so tiny, I couldn't exactly place them on the lace to see how they would look before I started sewing them on. I knew I wanted to have the beads bring in a hint of color and sparkle, and to accent the shapes of the scalloped edging and scrolls.

To review, here are the beads I had assembled for the project:

more commonly known as "all the beads"

With only three weeks to go before my self-imposed deadline, I decided to work in waves. That way, I could be sure to not find myself at the end of February with a dress that was clearly unfinished or uneven.

My first pass was to bead the scallops. I wanted to bring in some color here but not a lot. I was a bit timid here, since I wasn't really sure what the cumulative effect would be once I'd gone around the whole dress. At this point, I didn't bead any of the scrolls or other appliques:

This pass completed, I was really pleased with how the blue sequins and seed beads were picking up the blue of the chiffon sash. This was the one element of the dress that wasn't exactly clicking for me, but I figured that would change as the beading project went on.

I paused here to make the green gown for my daughter - if you haven't read about that yet, you can do so here.  That project took just over a week, then I was back to beading.  My next step was to focus on filling in the lace appliques. This is what I had after the first pass:

center back medallions holding the drape

where the skirt back meets the train

first pass at beading the scrolls

Overall, I was pretty happy with where things were going but I knew here that I wanted to have a lot more beads on the lace. A quick check of the calendar showed that I had a week to go before it was time to declare this dress "done" and move on to making a waistcoat and trousers. However, I do like a challenge so I abandoned my plan of working in waves and decided to jump in with both feet start filling in the blanks.

By this time, I had decided that the scrolls reminded me of nautilus shells as well as feathered fronts. To accent both of these things, I focused on accenting the spines of the swirls in addition to the feathered edges. For the train, I differentiated between the large motifs and the small. This was because the larger scrolls were focused at center back while the smaller scrolls go up the skirt. This kept with my fade/ombre idea from the initial design.  On the bodice, I just alternated every other scroll to ensure more even color coverage.  The floral appliques I beaded to match what I had done in the first pass where the drape attaches. I also filled in the edge lace with a lot more color:

edges filled in, and small scrolls
with gold pints and blue spines

floral inserts between small and large scrolls

the train, completely beaded

This was also where I made the call to go ahead and add colored beads to the bodice insert. I had been toying all along whether or not I should do this step. My reasons for doing it were two fold: first, the insert was a bit too flesh-colored for my liking and second, I had not yet used the smokier beads I had purchased.  They looked a little odd to mix in with the vibrant colors, and I hated to see them go unused. To do this, I needed to un-bead the portion of the lace which would show when the dress was worn and tie off the threads. I then worked the smoky blue and peach beads and the green "pearls" into the lace where I had removed the white beads and sequins. Here is the completed bodice:

This brings me to March 6. For those of you keeping track, this does mean that I did not finish on the day I had set for myself as a deadline. I knew I had run that chance when I had decided to jump in with a heavier beading plan, and just decided it was going to be okay to run a bit over. After all, I still had about week to go, right? With this done, it was time to step away and get that waistcoat and trousers project done. Fiances are patient, but there's no need to push it. I draped the dress on my mannequin, knowing I would need to come back to it in order to apply hooks and eyes or ask a friend to sew me in. That seemed like a viable option, since I do have some fairly talented friends who would be able to do just that. Six days and four yards of divine wool later, I undraped the dress with every intention of sewing on the hooks and eyes then bagging it up. However, as I looked at it on the mannequin, I just really didn't love that blue silk drape. I had hoped it would grow on me, and that once the beads were on then it would work, but the fact was that it just didn't. It was just past midnight on March 13, with the wedding on March 15, and it was time to make a call. If you scroll up, you can see that removing the drape altogether was not an option - or at least not a quick one. The lace covering where it attaches to the waistband is heavily beaded, and removing all of that would mean hours of work. That out, I had to come up with another option. It was late, I was behind schedule, and I wanted to fix things. Solution? Shears. I decided to turn the drape into a sash. I grabbed my shears before I could change my mind and cut the chiffon on the bias, slightly longer in the front than the back. I then unpicked the appliques holding the center drape in place. I quickly rebeaded those appliques, and then stepped back to see what I had done. Not bad. Raw edges, but not bad. Okay, what to do with those raw edges? Since the dress was now heavily beaded and nearly done, it was not going back to the sewing machine. Also, I needed to have these two "sash ties" make sense with the rest of the dress. It was now 2:00am, so I went to bed for fear of making a(nother) rash decision. In the warm light of dawn, the day before the wedding, I decided what to do: turn that chiffon into a sash by applying a beaded fringe. This would weigh down the edges, bring some more color to the upper skirt, and let me use the really cool square beads I had given up on finding a use for. After all, I hate letting beads to unused. Here is what I found out next: making beaded fringe is fast, not too difficult, and really impressive! Just under two hours in, I had this result:

close up of fringe

the front beaded sash

the back beaded sash

Well, there you have it: finished dress!