Dilly Doily

I mentioned in an earlier post that I was hoping to use doillies as part of the wedding decorations, and indeed I did! They were also part of the finishing touches of my wedding dress and bouquet.

But before I get onto that, I wanted to show you some of the other pretty things I found while trawling Pinterest...

1. Cute doily clouds from Hart + Sew 2. Pretty lit doily wreath from Martha Stewart 3. Sweet doily necklace I found on the Book of Deer blog 4. Buttons and doillies on an embroidery hoop - this gives me an idea...!

I'd seen a few 'Pins' a long time ago with the fabulous idea of creating a table runner using doillies. Similar to the necklace above I love the way they look when they're all hunched up together, contrasting patterns, colours and materials.
It took quite some time to gather together enough doillies to cover nine 9ft tables (!), and there were a few times when I really did question my sanity. It ended up costing a small fortune considering it looks so 'collected' and thrifty!

Piles and piles of doillies all over the house for pretty much five months, I really should count how many we actually ended up stitching together but I'm a bit too scared to!
What is lovely though, is that some of them were donated by my mum. There was a set from a holiday to Malta, and several that were actually made by my great grandmother, including an amazing hand-embroidered tablecloth which we didn't actually use. I must post some photos of it another day.

I'll show you the final results in a moment, but I also found the below on Pinterest, and having all of this source material to hand seems too good an opportunity to miss, so I'd really like to do some doodling different doily shapes, possibly onto shrink plastic. I've been hoping to find some buttons for a forlorn coat of mine...perhaps I can make some with this technique?! Ooh...exciting!

Anyway, here are a few snaps of the doillies in action. After all the pain of sewing them together (and some of them are mighty difficult!) I loved the results. I hope you do too...

This was a section of the skirt of my dress! My bridesmaid Sarah gave me the little embroidered monograms which my dressmaker sewed into the skirt. The crochet was actually a table runner! An amazingly lucky find in an antiques market in Nottingham.

 

 

A single doily was wrapped around my bouquet along with a strip of fabric from my dress

And that is probably not the end of my dalliance with doillies, so don't be surprised if they get mentioned more often!

Em xxx