Wedding Dress Repurposing

I have jumped into something new and I am VERY excited. 

My wondeful friends have encouraged me to do this after what I have done with my dress.  I am going to start repurposing wedding dresses into something useful for brides.  Whether that is pillows, a quilt, sachet bags, purses, whatever they want.  I can’t wait to get started and get my first customer. 

I mean why not?  Most brides I know have their dresses stored away in a closet or at their parent’s house.  What a great way to re-use the dress for something you can put to use more often.

Wedding Bonanza

What started as a group effort betwen my girlfriends and I has turned into something I love to do for my friends.  When KT got married we worked a quilt that included quotes about love, marriage and friendship.  When C-ann got married the following year we did another one that was very similar.

Then I moved to Florida.

Last year we attended Ben & Abby’s lovely wedding in Pataski, Michigan in August.  It was a great weekend.  They had a great colors and I had picked out material for their quilt back in January prior to our move.  I worked on the pieces all summer, but did not get the quilt finished.  Then other stuff happened and it just took forever.  Finally this summer I was determined to finish the quilt in order to be there for a their one year anniversary.

Quilts 028

Quilts 027

For this quilt I used a Disappearing Nine Patch pattern.  It is very easy to do and gives the quilt a nice random look.  With so many colors and different patterns, this is a great pattern to highlight each fabric.  These are the wedding colors of Ben & Abby as well.

One of the reasons Ben & Abby’s quilt was so late is because myself and two other girlfriends were all engaged within a two month period.  My girlfriends however were getting married a week apart in August.  I had six months to make their two quilts and finalize B & A’s as well.

Below is a picture of LeeAnne’s wedding quilt.  Her wedding colors were hot pink and black.  I can’t imagine a better combination for her.  I tried something new with her quilt…applique.  For my first try, it did not turn out too bad.

LAs wedding quilt

Lastly, I had Krista’s quilt to work on.  Krista chose great colors:  lemon, lime and orange.  I had to code all my projects early on so the girls wouldn’t know what I was really working on.  Hence, I called this the citrus quilt.  Below are pictures of the pieces of the quilt.  I have yet to finish the actual quilting.  I’m calling this one cascading colors.

Kristas wedding greenKristas wedding yellowKristas wedding orange