Maksu's Wedding project part 1

It all started with me offering my aunt to do some simple beading on my aunt's wedding veil. Somehow......it ended up me having to do beading on her wedding dress and also her hijab too. The photo above is the wedding kebaya that my aunt wanted to wear on her wedding day. The kebaya is quite old and was given to her by her best friend. She loved it so much so that she wanted it to be her wedding dress. Plus her husband to be once said she looked really pretty in it ;).

Well......me, on the other hand, could not accept it. The minute I saw the kebaya, I wanted to faint. The beads were not pretty at all. They had dropped off in so many places over the years. The kebaya looked like it needed help. So I helped her out! Let's just say, it's my way of giving her a wedding present. ;)

First of all, we had a small discussion on what colour I would use for the dress.....then, we discussed on the design. Well, it was more like me calling the shots when it came to designing it. But she did mentioned about the dos and the don'ts....first of all, she hates big pearls....so no big pearls on the dress, hijab or veil.....got it......and she wanted the colour of the beads to blend in with the colour of the kebaya itself. She didn't want the beads to look too contrasting or too outstanding. So I decided to use champagne gold and silver seed beads, off-white pearls, the smallest I could find and I also added some champagne colored flower sequins.

If you look carefully, at the sleeves and also at the bottom of the kebaya, I've already started beading on the empty space of the embroidery with champagne coloured seed beads and silver too. Gosh that was the most difficult beading I ever had to do. Sewing each seed beads one by one was the most crazy thing I've ever done. It took forever to finish!!! My fingers were sore too. Although it was something I regret doing in the beginning, somehow when it was all done, I felt glad I did it anyways. Because it was what made the kebaya looked special. :)

I took out all the dark gold tube beads on the kebaya one by one......and once all was taken out, I started to draw the swirling design. You can view the transformation on my next post!