Perhaps the largest thing we've placed in a shadow box in 30 years of business, an entire wedding dress was quite an undertaking. One of our more involved and certainly larger projects, this wedding dress was a wonderful way to demonstrate some of the techniques we put to use every time we frame something. We found a way to display and preserve a beautiful dress, and memory, for generations to come.

Colored mat boards are only made up to 40"x60" so we had to use fabric and mount it to a board with special tissue.

The board is too large for our vacuum press so we attached the fabric and tissue by hand with an iron.

Then we stitch the dress to the fabric covered board by hand. There are several ways to attach fabric but hand stitching is easily reversible and doesn't permanently damage the item and that's important to us.

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We add in some cotton batting to help give the dress some form and shape. Cotton is a conservation grade material and won't damage the fabric over time.

While the frame glues in the vices we build shims from the same material the dress is attached to.
The shims will hold the glass in the frame and the garment away from the glass. This separation is important to keep natural humidity changes from damaging the dress.

The entire thing is finished with Museum Glass that blocks 99% of UV rays and reduces glare significantly.