So here is the silk. I might actually have had too much light when I tried to photograph it, but you can at least see that it’s a nice off-white. The colour is actually what I would call a warm taupe. It’s like what most people call champagne, but darker and with a tiny hint of red in it.

Because I tried to dye 5 yards at once and clearly didn’t have a big enough vessel for that endeavour, the colour is mottled and significantly lighter on some pieces. Some time when I have more time I will educate myself more thoroughly on silk-dying techniques so I will be able to get the mottled and crinkled look when I choose and not do so when I don’t choose. But for now, I’m satisfied with the results for this project.

Here is a swatch with some copper and red beads (colours I intend to use when I embellish it). This picture is slightly closer to representing the colour… maybe…? But once it’s on your monitor, who even knows? WhatEVER. Warm taupe. Slightly gold in some lights. Very pretty (trust me).

I have done most of piecing and basting the bodice. I even tried it on once, and have now re-basted to let out the side seams by an inch or so. But now I’m scared to move it or try it on ever again because the threads that fray off the edges of pieces are so ridiculously fine that it’s like stepping into a giant spider web and then trying to get out without wrecking it. And afterward, these fine strands stretch out for like 3 or 4 feet and hover, improbably, in mid-air due only to their ridiculous fineness and a tiny bit of static electricity.

I pause after every little step and sit back to second-guess everything. Hm. Will I wish that I had planned for french seams to prevent fraying and so the seams in the back won’t show through the thin fabric? Or would I rather use a bit of a zigzag to keep the stretch in the angled seams? But those would be bulky seams. But I will probably need that stretch. Am I really planning on dancing in this dress? What if I sweat? Should I line it with something? Oh, but then I’ll for sure sweat.

Here’s something my aunt said in the comments:

Remember Naomi Wolf in (I think) Promiscuities talking about her wedding dress? How she bought it off a discount rack (or something) and it was a bit tattered or yellowed or something, but how those very qualities reflected best her relationship (or something). (Now I shall have to go find that passage so I can remember it properly.) Seems to me that is what you are doing here too.

I was puzzling over this, trying to figure out in what way this dress might represent the marriage I’m building. There is that it’s handmade, and Ian and I are do-it-yourselfers – but that’s hardly deep. That just makes this another project in a line of projects. There is no parallel, really, in how we approach the relationship. In fact, we are a little distressingly typical in the building and maintenance of the relationship.

But during my sixteenth bout of sitting back and staring critically at the dress today, I had a realization that by the time I wear this dress I will know it literally inside and out. I will have examined every minute detail, critically and unforgivingly. I wondered if, after four months of staring at its faults, I would even want to look at it, let alone wear it when it’s ready. And I knew that absolutely I would. And it will be because I know all its faults. Because that makes it more mine, I have its story and that makes my love of it more honest.

And then, of course, I thought, “Oh well that is where my approach to this dress exactly mirrors my approach to this relationship. By the time I actually get married, I will have picked apart everything about Ian, about how he and I interact, about relationships in general, marriages in general, risks, rewards, constraining factors, oh my god.

This metaphor works on many levels. Ian is the first relationship I’ve had where I didn’t feel like, “Oh if we could get past this issue then I’d know we could make it.” I’m intimately acquainted with his flaws and shortcomings, but they are all those kind of flaws that you can at least smile at, even if you are totally irritated with how he totally interrupts you in this pedantic tone all the time, gawd.

On a marriage level in general, too, I talk a lot about the things that don’t sit right with me about marriage. But I feel like when I can name all the things that are wrong with marriage in general, then at least I know what I’m trading away and what I gain. And I can go into it with an honest acknowledgment of what my issues are. Which is way better than trying to pretend they’re negligible issues. (And cognitive dissonance makes me physically ill, these days.)

Anyhow, after I came down from my indulgence of nit-picking and over-thinking everything, I also reminded myself, “hey, the whole reason for a handmade dress wasn’t to make yourself miserable, it was to set a relaxed tone.” The point was that if I’m getting married in a hand-made belly-dance-styled wedding dress, I can’t possibly take myself too seriously. The point is to be dressed in a way that is authentic to who I am (creative, unorthodox, slightly obsessive) so that I will remember to not waste time and energy on my wedding day in trying to play a part. And that, also, is pretty representative of the attitudes in my relationship.

So I will close with pretty much the best sympathetic wisdom that I got through this whole week. It was Thursday, when I first got and dyed this silk, that I had my crisis of self-assurance. That night I went to my belly dance class and was repeating to my BDFF (belly dance friend forever) how I had been all “OHMAHGAHD. Only 4.5 months! What did I get myself into?” And she said, “Well…You’ve lived together for four years? you have a house and a kid together?… this isn’t going to change your life.”

Then she paused and looked back at me and said, “Oh! What am I saying?! Of course it’s going to change your life. You’re going to have a beautiful dress that you can wear for belly dance performances ever after!”