Long time no talk! I have been on a much needed sewing break, so not much to blog about. Now it’s time to rev up things again though. I got some orders from family and friends to finish up and then next week it will be all about the wedding dress. As a friend noted “it seems like that dress has been going on forever”. Yup. Sourcing the right materials has been a very time consuming process, with many hiccups on the way. It all culminated yesterday when the bride-to-be was treated so rudely by the shop assistants in one of the fabric stores in town. She was going to buy some regular bemberg (rayon) lining, but when the staff realized that they couldn’t persuade her into buying expensive thai silk for the lining, they became unbelievable snotty and in the end she couldn’t even get samples of the bemberg lining! What happened to the adage “customer is king”?
I don’t frequent this store much myself, but I was still shocked to hear this. I have only had great experience with staffs at local fabric stores, but I think it’s because I frequent the smaller ones and they are mostly staffed by the owners, who tends to be real fabric and sewing geeks and thus very knowledgeable.
By the way, isn’t the recommendation to line a dress with thai silk a little over the top in most cases? It’s fairly stiff and rustles a bit too from my memory. I guess it does create a great body and Susan Khalje do recommend dupion silk for a high end couture lining in her book, but the bride wants a more casual party/cocktail kind of dress, that isn’t as stiff and precious as a full blown wedding gown. Plus using thai silk for the corset bodice, which requires four layers of fabric, will make the bodice way too thick I think.
Update: We went together to a nice store today and found the perfect bemberg lining, it looks really lush and luxe and the hue is a perfect match (see the first photo for the lining + lace). We chatted a bit with the store owner and ended up mentioning the incident yesterday, and she said she had heard similar horror stories about the staff there before. Apparently they act like the customers are total fools.
