Vintage Wedding Dress Shadow Box
This recent framing project was a first for me in my 21+ years of framing. My customer had a treasured family heirloom that she wanted framed… her great-grandmother’s wedding dress, which was hand-sewn by her great-grandmother 110 years ago! The dress was also worn by her mother when she got married in the 1970s. In addition to the dress, my customer had a photo of her great-grandmother and her children when they were small. Her grandmother was one of the identical twins in the photo.
With creative folding, the dress was able to fit in a 32”x40” size shadow box, which kept costs down. There was a lot of hand-stitching done to attach the dress to the mount board so that the fabric would be supported overall. I tried to stitch in the seams and hide as many of the stitches as possible.
The cotton wedding dress had been stored in a box in my customer’s cedar chest and other than being quite wrinkled when taken out of the box, the dress was in very good shape. There were a few yellow stains, but they were hidden when folding the dress for placement in the shadow box. With my twin sister’s help, I pressed the dress and was able to remove much of the wrinkling (this took almost 4 hours!). The dress had a lot of lace and fine pleating details – simply gorgeous!
My customer only had a small photocopy of the photo, but with some photo restoration, I was able to produce a good quality, sepia toned enlargement to display in the shadow box. The photo was floated above the mount board and dress. Keeping with the vintage theme, I re-finished a beaded fillet which I painted in a two-tone brown to complement the sepia photo. The green suede mat surrounding the photo was debossed with a floral design in the corners that mimicked the lace pattern in the dress.
Two mouldings from Larson-Juhl’s Brighton collection were stacked together to create a shadow box with enough depth to accommodate the dress. The face frame had a beaded detail at the lip which gave the frame a vintage look. My customer wanted to highlight the lace details in the dress so a soft green suede mat from Crescent Matboard’s Moorman suede collection was chosen. Tru Vue’s conservation clear glass provided 99% UV protection which will help keep this family heirloom looking its best for years to come.
It was such a pleasure working on this framing project and I felt it was fate that brought my customer to me since her grandmother was an identical twin and so am I. My customer was so happy with how it turned out.
