Wedding Shawls

A few months back a friend admired a shrug I was wearing to synagogue over a sleeveless tank dress.  My friend’s daughter was getting married and they were trying to figure out a shawl for the  bride’s attendants to wear. They had been looking for something appropriate but hadn’t had any luck.

 

Several weeks later we met to figure out what was needed for the wedding. The bride asked all of the bridesmaids to wear black dresses of their own choosing. I was really impressed by that choice. It means that this is a dress that either the bridesmaid actually already owns or one that she will actually wear in the future.

As anyone who has ever been a bridesmaid knows, most of those bridesmaids dresses are not at all wearable after the initial wedding.

 

I showed the bride and her mother a few shrugs and also some infinity scarves that I have made. They loved the versatility of the infinity scarf. For those of you not hooked into the term infinity scarf. basically you can wear it like a scarf or like a shrug/ a little jacket.  They loved the idea of the eight bridesmaids wearing the scarves as shrugs during the ceremony and then being able to wear it any number of ways going into the future.

 

 

December 24th, I went fabric shopping with the bride, her mother and older sister. Our initial thought  was for each member of the bridal party to have a different infinity scarf.  After looking the bride and her mother thought that just one scar would unify the varied bridesmaid dresses.

The settled on a great shimmery crinkled synthetic.

Here it is worn as a shrug.

Here is the scarf worn  un looped.

Here it is looped twice around the neck. it’s dramatic and fun and easy to wear. I made eight in charcoal , one for each of the bridesmaids.

 

The bride decided that she wanted one to wear during the outdoor photos.

The bride’s two adorable nieces each get a little infinity scarf to wear as well.

 

Mom wanted one too in her favorite color which she called  “nothing”. She loved the rayon burnout knit.

For those of you interested in the nuts and bolt the construction: Each scarf was 60 inches by the width of the fabric. I serged up the two cut ends forming a big circle. I then folded the circle in half  matching the two selvedge edges. I serged the selvedges together. Then I turned the serged edge twice and topstitched. 

 

Frankly, the hardest part of this project was figuring out how to engineer it so it could be made in a economically reasonable way.