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Baptismal gowns from wedding dresses
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| By: Rachel Westberg |
February 25, 2009 |
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Pictured is Colleen Jacob’s great-nephew, Owen, for whom Hartman created a baptismal gown using his mother’s wedding dress.
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Lois Hartman has been sewing both professionally and as a pastime for more than 50 years, but she was recently asked to do something she'd never heard of before: create a baptismal gown using an old wedding dress.
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Hartman says the adventure started when Colleen Jacob, of Chetek, inquired whether Hartman could make some pillows out of an old bridesmaid dress she had. Hartman agreed. It wasn't long after that when Jacob, on behalf of her sister Becky Lewin, asked Hartman if she could make a baptismal gown from her sister's wedding dress.
"I believe there was one done in my family at some point," recalls Jacob. "I knew Lois was an excellent seamstress, so I figured I'd ask her if she could do it. At first she seemed a little hesitant, but she agreed to try."
Hartman spent two to three weeks on the dress-tearing the wedding dress apart and putting it back together again in a smaller size, then adding lace. The final gown had a sleeveless undergarment with a jacket to wear over it.
"It was fun," said Hartman. "I'd done wedding dresses before and it sounded like a good idea, so I said I'd give it a try and see how it turned out. It was really a pleasure to work on the gown. There was a lot of intricate work, but it turned out so beautiful. I love to sew and it just goes with my creativity."
"The dress turned out awesome," remembers Jacob. "The time she put into it was incredible. Sewing has really become a lost trade. I can barely sew on a button, so to see her do something like this was just a masterpiece to me."
For Hartman, knowing that she was helping to preserve a special day in someone's life made the project all the more worthwhile.
"It is a very beautiful way of having something precious turned into something that can be passed down in the family," Hartman suggests. "It's a great way to pass on heritage that could be kept forever. The wedding dress [starts as] a dress of love that leads to the creation of the children. Then the children are in it at their baptism being given to the Lord, the Creator of the love that started the dress in the first place. It is a full circle of God's love."
Not only is it a way to preserve a special day in one's life, but Hartman and Jacob add it is a way to recycle something that often doesn't get used again. Hartman liked the idea so much that she is even considering taking apart her own wedding dress and creating a baptismal gown for some members of her family. She doesn't have any children, but she does have some cousins who may be able to pass down the gown.
"My dress sits at the bottom of a cedar chest like everyone else's,'" reveals Hartman. "What am I going to do with it? Why not take my dress and let it go on into the family?"
"My dress is in a box downstairs," adds Jacob. "You hope one of your kids will wear it, but girls are picky about their wedding dress. When the dress just sits in a box, it would be cool to have that heritage."
Hartman says she never expected people to be interested in such an idea, and she has only done one other gown since that one. But she believes there are a lot of people who just don't think about passing down a wedding dress in this way. Maybe that will change.
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©The Chetek Alert 2010
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