Kim's Wedding Dress aka Crazy Quilt

My Daughter’s Wedding Dress Crazy Quilt
Dean Deerfield © 2008



Twenty years ago my daughter announced her future wedding plans to me. The plans included me making her dress, cake, and everything else that goes with a wedding. I told her to find a picture of a dress she liked and we would do something similar, but keep it simple.. The picture below is the result of that search.

I was lucky enough to find a fabric store that carried fancy fabric. They did not have the lace, but had a place in France where they could order it, and the price was $125.00 a yard. Thank goodness Kim was very small and I didn’t need very much lace. The dress in the picture was silk dupioni. I made Kim’s dress from a nice bridal satin.
The two pictures below are the end result of the dress I made for her.

After the wedding, the dress was hung in my closet, and that is where it stayed for years, until I started cleaning out my house. I retired, sold my house. and moved to another city. I called her and ask her what she wanted me to do with the dress. We decided to make the crazy quilt. I was unsuccessful in finding the attendants’ dresses. My plan had been to make it blue and white, but it turned out more colorful. The choice of color came from a very old piece of variegated tatting my sister had made. It had blue, pink, purple, green, and yellow in it.
Each block has a piece of lace from the dress. Family memorabilia is used in the embellishments. A few of the bows from the dress are left in tact.
If I had this choice to make again, I would make the whole crazy quilt in the white satin, and embellish it with one color, the color blue she had in her wedding. The quilt would look more like a wedding dress quilt, but it still turned out to be a pretty quilt.
Below are pictures of the quilt. It still is not finished, but almost. I have a few three more blocks to embellish, then I can finish. You can see the quilt in the photo below.

Kim's wedding dress aka Crazy Quilt

Houston International Quilt Festival

The Houston quilt show was wonderful and I had such a great time. One of the guilds I belong to gave me a $500.00 scholarship to take classes. That helped to make the trip enjoyable. This was my first time to take classes and I really enjoyed the classes I took. I was there from Tuesday until Sunday, leaving early Sunday morning. I have already started saving for next year.

There were people there from some of the chat sites and it was fun to meet them and have a face to go with the names. I am still looking for a package of dye and a bag of droppers. I hope they show up and didn't get lost in the shuffle.

I made a point of sewing on the new 12 needle Baby Lock felting machine. It is great and they had an unbelievable special show price on it. Did I buy one, what do you think. Hey!!! it was less than half what they retail for. What else could I do? Naturally the next thing was to find roving. I only have a trash bag full already, but I did find some wonderful natural roving with the most amazing color and patterns. Then there was the curly tags that were to die for, and had to have some of those. One thing just leads to another.

I helped a new young mother with her triplets for two months to make extra money for the trip. They were the cutiest little things and I fell in love with them. Three little boys, and the smallest one was so precious. Austin was his name, and I will post pictures in a day or so.