Amazing Stories

Here is your page. A place for you to tell how you handled a difficult situation, overcame a stressful challenge, or helped a bride with an impossible problem.

added November 2007

Dear Leanna,

I came across your web site looking for ideas for sewing rooms. (I am remodeling my home and have a guest/sewing room. I don’t want all that space dominated by a bed that may be used 10 days/year. Solution: Our professional cabinet-maker/son-in-law is building a wall bed that will stand 20” deep from the wall and have a two 18” drawers below and adjustable shelves above on one side. The spacious area that opens to form the bottom of the bed will become my design wall/quilt display space. The rest of the room it mine. Win-win!

The reason I am writing it to you a story about the pregnant bridesmaid problem. On Valentine’s Day 1996 our daughter announced that she would be getting married the following summer, 17 months later. The following month we learned that the garden she wanted for the wedding had an unexpected opening for that same summer so we started planning the wedding for July 21, just 4 months later. My daughter wanted a very simple dress and I offered to make it. But we could find nothing simple enough to suit her among the patterns we browsed. So she ordered a silk sheath maid’s dress that she would dress up with the bouquet and veil. I advised her that this would still be very plain. But this is what she wanted so she ordered it with the assurance it would arrive in 8 weeks.

Each maid agreed to find a dressmaker to sew her dress within 4 months. The pattern was a simple Nicole Miller low jewel neck sheath. I bought the patterns, fabric, notions and kitted them for the four maids. (The fabric was from Britex in San Francisco, a wonderful fabric store.) In chronological order, this is what happened:

Maid #1 found a dressmaker and her dress was finished in 1 month. Great!
Maid #2 was our other daughter. I agreed to make her dress because I’m her mom and wanted to. Finished in one weekend… no problem.
Maid #3 was a new college graduate and without a job, couldn’t afford the dressmakers she called, so I made hers about 2 weeks later. Still on a roll.
Maid (matron) #4 was pregnant at the time she was selected and would be 7 months at the time of the wedding. I selected a maternity dress pattern that was very similar to the other dresses. bought her an extra yard (60” wide) of fabric and off she went. But the dressmaker she chose told her it could not be laid out with the amount of fabric I supplied. I looked it over and told her it COULD be done and I would do it for her. By making and inserting a 1.25” self-fabric sash into each side seam, it was easy to tie a bow to adjust the fullness and from the front and in the photos, it is impossible to tell her dress from the others. I was proud and by mid- June, all the maid’s dresses were finished. Whew!

In mid-June the bridal shop called to say the bride’s dress had arrived. Liz tried it on and in the mirror I saw her face fall as she said “You were right, Mom, it’s way too plain.” And of course nothing we could do about it. Ever up-beat, I told her we could get right back in the car, drive to San Francisco (25 minutes) and buy the pattern and fabric for the dress she liked the most. I had a 4-day weekend coming for 4th of July and agreed to make it if she agreed to come by for fittings on demand. We returned home with 9 yards of silk and a crazy sense of exhilaration/trepidation. We agreed not to tell anyone what we were doing because I didn’t want to endure the chorus of “You’re crazy!!”. I treated myself to a new pair of Gingher shears and the dress was finished with 1-week to spare. The wedding was beautiful and my only regret was that I had not made all four maids’ dresses. Dress #1 that was made by the dressmaker screamed “home-made”. Examining it later showed that the lining and dress fabrics had been sewn as a unit, bunching and pulling all the way. An amateurish shortcut that could not be disguised or hidden. Too bad. We put her in the background in all the photos.

To this day, I don’t know how I did it. I was working more than full time and traveling as director of a start-up company -- it must have been sheer adrenaline that sustained me through this period.

With kind regards, Bonnie