The Sewing Place
The Emporia => A bit of a 'do' => Topic started by: charlotte on August 05, 2017, 13:51:32 PM
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So I think I have
foolishly very kindly volunteered to make all three of my friend's bridesmaids dresses!!
Fabric is an embroidered tulle over a cotton lawn so shouldn't cause too many issues. (She says confidently :S) Fairly standard fitted bodice and pleated skirt. The only slightly complicated bit is that the neckline and sleeves are will be just the tulle layer so need to work that out, and also think about building in some support as we all agreed we are not fans of strapless bras. Wedding not until April, so technically plenty of time, although I do have an awful lot of projects which need to be finished by October...
I have said I will start by making my own, plus toiles for the other two girls and if it turns out time is getting tight by then we can outsource actual making up of those two using mine and the toiles for reference.
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Sounds to be a wonderful project.
What pattern are you using?
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Oh you are more brave than me.
Have fun, bet they'll be so lovely.
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Good luck, Charlotte.
I get asked occasionally if I'll make bridesmaids dresses but I know I'll be out of my depth, so it's always a 'No', from me.
Sandra.
xxx
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Lovely projects!
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Coooo. You've a heart like a lion. :woof: (closest we have).
The only problems I can foresee are not due to your capabilites but from everybody putting in their tuppence ha'penny!
STAND FIRM!!!! And the very best of luck.
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I love making bridesmaid dresses such a satisfying garment to make and sooooo much better than the rubbish people seem to buy online today (or is it just the people I know?)
The problems come when one or more bridesmaid decides to diet after all measurements are taken, toiles done and the dresses made!
Make sure your bridesmaids don't do that I'm all for people losing weight if they want to feel better about themselves but people don't realise how much work is involved in the phrase 'can't you just take it in a bit here, here, and here' :S
Hope we get to see pics :)
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Justpottering....That's my fear, regarding making dresses for dieting bridesmaids.
The other problem is pregnant ones.
I seem to get lots of alterations on dresses for either pregnant bridesmaids, or ones who have recently given birth.
Sandra.
xxx
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Ooh lots of responses. Yes I am much happier making them myself than having them made cheaply!
Very unlikely that any of us will be getting pregnant so should be okay on that front! Weight-wise my friend and I are not losing weight sort of people(!) so we should be fine. Bride's sister from what I can gather has no plans to lose weight but bride thinks she should :S so that could be interesting. Might have to distract the bride for her fitting so she can tell me honestly!!
There will definitely be pictures.
Currently trying to decide on what fabric to use for the lining. Leaning towards cotton lawn (same as the underlay) but wondering whether that will not do enough to prevent creasing.
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The problems come when one or more bridesmaid decides to diet after all measurements are taken, toiles done and the dresses made!
Yep, my sister-in-law's sister did that. I'd made all boned bodices, toile was fitted and then when it came to final fit, she'd lost quite a lot of weight. Re did the bodice and she was under instructions not to lose any more and she promised not to......but she did. I was devastated as it looked like (to me at least) that hers hadn't been fitted properly.
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Dresses will be like this, except with a red underlay and a skirt that is pleated rather than gathered. And a plain waistband (red with non-embroidered tulle on top) rather than a sash/belt/ribbon thing.
(https://i.imgur.com/GAyg3cE.jpgl)
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Oh I've got that fabric for DD in the black tulle and white tulle versions.. I got it out to examine it when it arrived and I think I thought it was wider/ deeper than the description on Ali Express .. It has gone into the stash but I can check if you like?
just to add I think its quite soft so you might want a net under it if your using lawn
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That is just gorgeous, I don't envy you the task though.
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Thanks vegegrow. Yeah I had two yards of it already so I have seen/felt it. I'm planning to mount it onto underlined lawn/net for the sheer part, rather than having separate layers for that exact reason. Hoping that at least the softness will mean the sleeves will ease in like a dream but that's probably wishful thinking. That said, I've gone to a different eBay seller as the first one had sold out so hoping it's the same!
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Your reference dress is very pretty. Do you have a pattern in mind?
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I have New Look 6508 (http://www.simplicity.com/new-look-pattern-6508-misses-dress-with-open-or-closed-back-variations/N6508.html) but I think the sleeves start too high up on the shoulders, so any suggestions of something better or advice on how to alter this would be very very welcome.
Neckline also needs changing and I need to add a waistband as well but I'm happy with those bits.
Also, there is absolutely no way the skirt is happening as pictured with the back zip running down the centre back pleat. I'm thinking three pleats (front and back) instead of four so the zip is nicely tucked between two.
So in summary: yes, I do have a pattern, but not one that doesn't need lots of stylistic changes!!
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Charlotte there's an article on the "tutorials" board about fitting sleeves which looks quite good. Obviously you're much further advanced than I in these matters but it might have a wee tip that would help you. :)
W.
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Right. My bodice is done apart from the sleeves and the back button/loop :D
(https://i.imgur.com/aDwBu74l.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/Mgqz80Zl.jpg)
Have pretty much everything cut out too so I'm pretty pleased considering I only started on Sunday evening.
Just waiting on some silk satin, which I have decided is necessary for the waistbands.
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That's beautiful. 0_0
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Gonna be gorgeous!
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Beautiful Charlotte! Look forward to seeing your progress.
Jessie
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That's gorgeous, love the red hemming/edging too.
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Had a minor setback last night... put one sleeve in, tried it on and realised that the net I had used to support the sheer yoke was really scratchy at the finished edge, and left a big red mark across my collarbone. I briefly considered starting again but instead I painstakingly cut out all the scratchy net and then redid the edging 1/4" below. This was easier said than done as I had to go at snail's pace to stop the machine eating the tulle as I was so close to the edge, and I had to keep stopping and starting when this did happen. Plus my bobbin thread ran out somewhere around centre front. Gr!! It looks okay I think but I can see all the lumpy bits. :\
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Oh I so agree - hate scratchy edges - can't even stand labels in clothes - they have to come out.
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I thought it was just me.....
Jessie
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Charlotte- the dress is beautiful so far!
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I thought it was just me.....
Jessie
No, can't tell you the number of labels I have had to take out of DDs clothes :o
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Made me chuckle when I discovered a "Hand made with a Vogue pattern" label in my dress pattern - no chance of me adding a scratchy label to anything!!
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Best I can do with my limited photography skills:
(https://i.imgur.com/CJbLThTl.jpg) (https://i.imgur.com/NVSiGzMl.jpg)
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That is really beautiful.
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they are looking fab Charlotte
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A seriously lovely dress. I've seen that embroidered fabric on ebay and DF has a dress from.it on her blog. Looks great.
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That is so unusual and looks stunning. Beautifully made too.
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Thanks for all the compliments! :)
One down, two to go. The other two are getting tack fittings, so a bit more effort but I've got plenty of time as the wedding's not until April.
Just checked out DF's dress and it looks amazing! I might have to get some of the black for myself!
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Beautiful!
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Right. My bodice is done apart from the sleeves and the back button/loop :D
(https://i.imgur.com/aDwBu74l.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/Mgqz80Zl.jpg)
Have pretty much everything cut out too so I'm pretty pleased considering I only started on Sunday evening.
Just waiting on some silk satin, which I have decided is necessary for the waistbands.
This is really lovely! Did you embroider the flowers?
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This is really lovely! Did you embroider the flowers?
Hahaha no way! The fabric comes ready-embroidered. I don't think I could even manage one hand-embroidered dress, nevermind three!!
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How do you plan to finish the edges?
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How do you plan to finish the edges?
The neck and hem? They are finished. :|
It's a couched edge with an embroidery thread sewn over with a machine zigzag. They look good in real life as they reflect the embroidery on the fabric. Maybe not so great in the photos!
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My fault, my dear, my eyes are crap at the mo - full of hay fever and blur - I thought they were just thread marked. That's a good solution - very delicate. May just have to borrow it.
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Hellooooooo!
It's been aaaaaaaages since I posted.
My dress is finished, will try to get some photos of it on soon when I can find someone to take them.
Final fitting with both other girls tonight. Fairly confident about one, but bride's sister I have only seen once and the toile I got on her (from the measurements she gave me!) was waaaay to small. Argh! I have a tacked together dress to put her in, but I think there will be lots of changes. After this I won't be able to get the dress on her until the day of so I'm feeling the pressure! :\
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Charlotte! I was thinking about you just the other day, and wondering how you were getting on with your lovely dresses!
Fingers crossed for you for the fitting. It's hard when you haven't got a body to work with! :S
Jessie
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@charlotte: I would be spitting feathers at those incorrect measurements. I can't believe that someone doesn't know how to use a tape measure. :angry:
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@charlotte: I can't believe that someone doesn't know how to use a tape measure. :angry:
Oh I can. I really can. I'm a maths lecturer, and I have learned NEVER to assume kids can use a ruler to measure aline on a piece of paper, let alone wrap a tape round a lumpy bumpy normal body. And if they had the tape the wrong way round [ie measuring from the wrong end] the numbers would not register as being incorrect. I've just marked a couple of hundred foundation maths papers, and only about 25% could estimate the height of a man and the height of a tree from a little scale drawing. Quite a few had height estimates of well over 100m for the man...
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She may also have taken a few inches off her measurements because she wanted to pretend she was thinner. Or given the supposed measurements for her RTW size rather than measuring at all.
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Or given the supposed measurements for her RTW size rather than measuring at all.
That seems faaaarrrr more likely. So many people don't seem to have tape measures in the house.
A guy I went to uni with joked that in order to get the measurement for his graduation hat, he'd had to get four rulers and "try and hold them round my head and work out roughly how big my head was". I said "why not just use a piece of string/cable/literally ANYTHING stringy in nature, put that round your head then measure it with your straight ruler?"
This person graduated university and now had a PhD.
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0_0 I take it all back.
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When I was making the Belle dresses, I wondered why it was taking so long for my GD to send me measurements. I eventually found out that a) she didn't own a tape measure, and b) she didn't know which side to use ' the big side or the little side'.
Bring back sewing in schools....
Jessie
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I've just caught up with this, those dresses are gorgeous Charlotte. I don't envy you, quite a few years ago I made dresses
for DD's bridesmaids. One of the bridesmaids arrived the night before the wedding - she lived 200 miles away and she had lost weight after the final fitting, so there I was altering the bodice the morning of the wedding, as if I didn't have enough to do. :devil: I'm looking forward to seeing the finished dresses, I love the fabric.
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Bring back sewing in schools...
It still exists as far as I know. At least, my 15 year old cousin does it and so does her brother. I don't think it's completely gone.
Of course, no clothesmaking which probably explains tape measure knowledge.
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A friend's daughter, who started in high school last September, gets 2 terms doing 'textiles' in the first 2 years. Going on what others have done she says that the first thing she will have to do is make a hat.
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It still exists as far as I know. At least, my 15 year old cousin does it and so does her brother. I don't think it's completely gone.
Of course, no clothesmaking which probably explains tape measure knowledge.
'Textiles' exists as an option, in SOME schools, but it doesn't have to include sewing as far as I'm aware. Just as 'food technology' can be all about designing packaging and calculating nutrients, rather than cooking. Partly because many schools simply don't have the space or staff to deal with it, not just because they are seen as useless skillsets. Crazy. Remember most schools these days struggle to have enough paper and books, let alone anything more unusual [like enough staff]!
As for the tape measure thing, as I have said [as a maths teacher] it's amazing how many kids can't measure something with a ruler, let alone a tape measure! the concept of length seems very hard to grasp, let alone *gasp* girth or circumference. They don't 'get' that they are counting the spaces between marks, not the marks themselves. Or, as I said, they start measuring from the one, not the zero.
I despair.
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Cooking and sewing are deemed to be useless skillsets in the face of ready cooked meals and fast fashion. As you say, money and equipment, not to mention suitably qualified staff, has killed any hope of a proper return of these traditional subjects.
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Cooking and sewing are deemed to be useless skillsets in the face of ready cooked meals and fast fashion. As you say, money and equipment, not to mention suitably qualified staff, has killed any hope of a proper return of these traditional subjects.
I mean really, parents should be teaching these things. Schools shouldn't have to teach absolutely everything - it's not possible. And for most people sewing a skirt is never going to be something that is a needed skill. There are many more things far more useful than that which don't get taught in schools! I feel bad for putting so much pressure on teachers to "parent" their students.
Anyway, very OT :|
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Yes- but this has been going on for years now, and most of the parents haven't a clue either. I have had to teach kids how to sew on a button, as they would expect to throw the garment away...aaargh!
And primary schools are reporting that kids do not recognise what a potato or carrot looks like in its natural state!
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Fran, I am more than 30 years older than you and my school taught what was then domestic science in which we did learn to cook. Further the school also had a 'flat' - kitchen, living room and bathroom - for teaching us girls housekeeping. We also did needle work and I recall making the obligatory apron and then a baby doll nightdress.
Society has changed and even your parents' generation do not necessarily have the skills to pass on to their children. Those that are interested, will skill themselves. The rest will continue to shop from the pre-cooked aisles and low end fashion outlets.
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My kids, who are about Fran's age group both did two years of textiles at secondary school and I still have two lovely cushion covers to prove it! Neither chose textiles as their technology GCSE option. However, how many of us oldies actually did much cookery or sewing at school? I did a smattering of sewing and knitted a pot holder :S in primary school. I have not had occasion to use a knitted pot holder since then.
Then I had 2 years of sewing in secondary school failing to complete a sludge coloured blouse whereupon it was full steam ahead with Latin. Some of us would not have had the option to do sewing and it wasn't made very attractive. UR's babydoll nightie sounds more attractive that my sludgey blouse. It waa made impossible to do what was regarded as a more academic route alongside home economics. I was largely self taught in sewing like a lot of folks here, I'm sure.
I have tried conjugating a Latin verb over a sock that needs darning but the spell never seems to work somehow..... :D
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amo amas amat amamus amatis amant!
But the one we giggled over was
mitto mittis mitTIT mittimus miTTITIS MITTUNT! [well, it sounded rude back then, we were very sheltered lol]
And yes, we did exaggerate the 'rude' bits lol
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My concern is that there are so many things that schools *could* teach that would probably be far more valuable, but constantly putting more pressure on schools and teachers is not addressing the problem. If kids should be taught to sew, shouldn't they also be taught to drive a car, change a nappy, do a tax return, efficiently navigate a bus timetable... god, so many things that are probably far more useful than learning to sew when one has no inclination to make their own clothing or homewares. I don't really see a problem with lack of learning these skills when it can easily be taught by parents, if they know it, or sought out online.
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Sewing, not so much [although buttons and hems...happen to us all] but cooking is something everyone should do. The trouble in scholl isn't that there isn't room for these things to be taught, but that the kids are taught WAY too many subjects to superficial levels of general incompetence. And don't get me going about how academic standards have plummeted blah blah [they have, oh my god, they have]
In the chase for the government sanctioned 'pass' grades, kids are force fed as many as a dozen pointless exam subjects, which they have no interest in. When I went to grammar school, way way back in 1971, we did eight subjects, and most kids in a standard comp did 5-6 max. With eight O levels I was deemed over qualified by most employers!
Sigh
It's a right mess
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Agreed. I am older than you and the core subjects were: English, maths, history, geography, art and stuff you did in the science block. 0_0
Education is being dumbed down with school qualifications being less than useless with too many students going to university to study non-vocational subjects. A high proportion of university graduates have non-graduate jobs and still have to pay off that massive loan.
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I always wished we were taught cooking at school. I do remember we had 'life skills' sessions in sixth form, but I think you only two... I think I did cooking and something which included ironing, sewing on a button and changing a plug because I was late signing up. I missed out on basic car maintainance and budgeting...
Back to the dresses - BM1's fits like a dream and looks gorgeous. False measurements girl's was not as bad as it could have been. I need to move the bust darts, raise the waistband, and she's decided she wants it a bit shorter. All fine.
Then she said as I was leaving, 'of course, I'll probably have lost most of the weight off my chest by the wedding'. :angry:
I see myself sat in the hairdresser's chair the morning of the wedding hand stitching her dress...
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Padding. Take padding. ;)
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I think I would have told her that the dress would no longer fit if she lost too much weight and would look awful on her.
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I think I would have told her that the dress would no longer fit if she lost too much weight and would look awful on her.
Absolutely. And then LET it look awful on her. Some people refuse to get the drift- won't you have better things to do on the day? MAke that plain NOW
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Then she said as I was leaving, 'of course, I'll probably have lost most of the weight off my chest by the wedding'. :angry:
At which point I hope you said 'in that case I will need to see you 1-2 weeks before the wedding so I can check the fit again?'
Or do as DF suggested :devil:
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Hey guys!
There’s been a lot going on, but the wedding happened!
Hopefully the photographer got some better picutres but here’s a quick idea for the time being!
(https://i.imgur.com/dUsBB1p.jpg)
(https://i.imgur.com/bLR6VAe.jpg)
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Charlotte I was wondering how your dresses went only the other day.
They look beautiful! You have done a lovely job.
Jessie
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Such pretty dresses! Well done.
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Lovely, lovely, lovely.
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They are beautiful! :loveit:
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Beautiful dresses, Charlotte. Well done.
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Yumminess!
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They look fab. Well done!
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Those dresses are beautiful and so unusual. Fantastic job.
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Gorgeous!
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Fantastic! And so nice to see something different.
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Beautiful, and so lovely to see some covered-up-ness. By the way, who was the one threatening to lose weight?
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Lovely dresses and everyone looks very happy. Well done, you were very brave to take up the challenge.
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Oh what beautiful dresses, and what a wonderful job you did of them all! Congratulations to the bride and groom, but mostly to you, for all your hard work.
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Beautiful dresses and everybody looks so happy.
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