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.