Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Something old, something new...

A couple weeks ago, a friend of mine asked me if I could make a special blanket for her daughter's upcoming baptism. Out of her wedding dress. What a great idea! (The first idea had been to make a baptismal gown for her out of it, but she couldn't find anyone able to make that happen.) Here's what I ended up making:





I took a large section of the dress with no detailing on it and cut a square out of it, leaving the original seaming from the dress in place. Then I cut a cross out of one of the decorated sections to put in the middle. I ended up hand-appliqueing the cross the larger square (the first time I've ever appliqued anything!). I also removed beads from another section of the dress and used them to outline the cross. To dress up the rest of it, I lifted some sections of the embroidery and transferred them to the blanket in sort of a random pattern (the scattered flowers). Then I took more of the beads from the dress and used them around the outside of the blanket to fill in some gaps, using the same bead pattern that was used elsewhere on the dress. Since I had already put on the backing at this point, I stitched the beading through both layers of fabric to help the back stay in place. Finally, I used a satin blanket binding to finish the edges. (I was going to use my new twin needles for this part so it would look that much cooler, but I managed to break them while testing them out. Sigh.)

For the record: this was one of the better ideas that I've heard of for re-using a wedding dress.

5 comments:

Jessica E. Fleming said...

This is beautiful! I had heard of making your wedding dress into a baptismal gown, but I've never seen it made into a blanket. What a great idea!

Unknown said...

That is so beautiful! Great job barbara!

jessica said...

Great job Barbara! I still have the pillow Kathy made out of my wedding dress that we used in our wedding.

Reenie said...

Betsy that is gorgeous! Great job!! And I do love the idea! My grandma made her wedding gown into a baptismal gown and then a first communion dress, both of which were worn by her children and many grandchildren. I love this idea though and you pulled it off perfectly!

Anonymous said...

WOW - that is beautiful and such a wonderful idea. You are very talented!!