Don't be Such a Tule

Alternate title: The non-perfectionist guide to veil making.

You may or may not remember that I was feeling totally overwhelmed with veil options. Well hive, I made a choice (literally I made it! (Har har puns are fun!)). I decided to go pretty traditional with a fun twist. Props to you if you pick up on the twist. I will be wearing the home made veil for the ceremony and Step-mama-Aardvark's cute short veil for the reception.

Anyone who has any interest in being totally shocked by my wedding day look (Mr. Aardvark) should probably not read this post...Or only read about half way. 

Ok, now that we have that out of the way, one more disclaimer. I am not a perfectionist. Not even close. I am a Better-stop-now-before-I-totally-ruin-it-cause-it's-pretty-good-right?-ist. That is the approach I used when I made this veil. I did do extensive youtube "how to make a veil" research and took my favorite bits from each one. I have to say, I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. If you are not interested in a $200 dollar veil, perfect edges, or perfect symmetry, I recommend this project and tutorial.

What you need:

Tule (or other light weight fabric of your choosing)

Yarn

Thread

Needle

Sewing Machine 

Comb 

Scissors 

Any doodads you want to jazz it up after you're done.

Step One: Take a piece of brightly colored yarn and measure the length you would like your veil. If you would like a blusher, include this in the length. As a side note, I do not recommend booty tooching while actually measuring (only for photos). I do recommend adding extra length because you are better safe than sorry. 

Cut the yarn to length.

Step Two: Use the yarn to measure the tule. I had purchased 10 yards of 108" wide tule. That may have been about double what I needed and caused a lot of confusion. I would get a rough idea of how much tule you need before ordering. Bridesmaid OT was a champ helping with this whole thing! I would still be tangled in tule if it weren't for her!

Cut the tule to the same length as the yarn. This is one part that doesn't have to be perfect because it will be cut off later.

Step Three: Fold your now cut tule in half "hotdog style" aka longwise.(You know from grade school fold you paper like a hotdog or like a hamburger). If you are having a blusher, fold it both ways (into quarters) for less cutting. Pin the tule so the folds stay put. Then, "draw"half of the curve you would like for the end of your veil with yarn. It is key that the center of the curve (shown to the right in this picture) is on the folded edge (not the open edge). This will ensure a nice curve when you unfold it and not two weird humps. 

Cut along the curve.

Step Four: Ok, major blogger fail here, I didn't take any pictures of step four. So you will just have to visualize with me. Anyway, once I cut the curve I needed to figure out how long I wanted the blusher compared with the rest of the veil. I did this by unfolding the whole thing, placing it on my head and adjusting until I was happy with the front to back ratio. (Full disclosure, this was the most difficult part of the whole thing. With large amounts of light colored tule it was really easy to lose track of the orientation.) Once I had the blusher segment where I wanted it (plus a little extra length) I had Bridesmaid OT pin a little piece of yarn on the top of my head where I will eventually put the comb to hold the veil in place. Then we removed the tule from my head, and used the yarn marker as our guide as we pinned from edge to edge. If it helps you visualize, our finished product looked like a large vertical oval that had the top 1/4 folded down. 

Step Five: Set your sewing machine to the largest stitch size. For a high volume veil (which I am making) sew from one edge to the other along the fold leaving about a 1/4 inch allowance. If you want your veil to be less poofy, don't go all the way to each edge. It is important to note, DO NOT double back over your stitches during this step. It will really mess with step six.

Step Six: Take hold of the bobbin thread. If you don't know which is the bobbin thread, give each a gentle tug, it's the one that moves. Pull the bobbin thread, this will cause the fabric to gather. Make sure it is (more or less) evenly bunched.

Once you have it gathered down to the approximate size of your comb (or head headband or whatever you are attaching it to, sew another row of stitches on top of the first one, making sure to double back when you start and finish this will ensure it won't unravel.


At this point, you pretty much have a veil.  As you can see below.

Please ignore the non-veil part of this photo AKA the mess.

For a little extra fullness, I repeated the measure, cut, sew, and gather steps (minus the length of the blusher) and stuck an extra later under the long part of the veil 

Now, if you like the ruffly look of the gathers, you can skip this step, but I wanted to clean it up a bit. I took one of the extra pieces of tule

Last Step: Stitch the comb onto the veil. Make sure the teeth of the comb point to the end of the veil and the top lines up with the top end of the blusher.

If you happen to have oddly shaped furniture in your guest room, because you Christmas tree is taking over your living room, you can see what the veil looks like there. 

Or you can put it on your head...

I may add beads or something to the comb just to jazz it up a bit.

 Side view. I didn't get a great shot of the blusher on me, but I really like it. Looking at this veil on me was a pretty powerful moment. It was my first, OMG, I'm a bride! moment. My heart raced, I teared up, the whole nine yards. This just got real folks. This was going to be a major part of my bridal look.

Artsy shot

I should also add that I threw on on of Mr. Aardvark's white T-shirts so I could get the full white on white bridal look. 

I wasn't able to get a picture of the bottom edge, but is just barley sweeps the floor when I have my shoes on. If you can't tell by the picture above, I am pretty excited. 

What do you think? Are you making a major part of your day-of look?