A Prom Dress is Born

Sewing a prom dress is like having a baby. You forget how bad it is after each “delivery” so you’re willing to do it again a few years later.

As with any new arrival, each dress is eagerly anticipated. There are colors and styles to be decided upon, a name to be chosen (not really, but it feels like that) shopping to be done, planning for the big event.

There is great excitement, laughter, joy. Then there is the actual labor.

On rare occasions a prom dress comes into the world easily, effortlessly and with very little pain. The fabric slides through the sewing machine onto the ironing board and into the arms of its wearer. And there is great rejoicing.

Sometimes, it’s not that easy. Hours and hours of labor -- cutting, basting, fitting, stitching, un-stitching, refitting, re-stitching; moments when one is certain it is almost over, then the hard truth hits: three more hours of labor. Then another hard truth: in two and a half hours the date will be here to pick up the newborn prom dress with the girl inside of it.

Such was the case yesterday with our little bundle of joy.

Let me say right now that I love to sew. Love it! I started sewing when I was eleven years old. Melissa Snow and I took a class at ZCMI the summer before sixth grade. We made knee-length shorts and elastic waist A-line skirts and I thought I had found heaven. Melissa and I both continued sewing and eventually both placed in the “Make It With Wool” competition. Later she became the home-economics teacher at our high school alma mater. I became a nurse and in my “free time” sew things like baby clothes, quilts and prom dresses.

The week begins uneventfully.
While I am at work, daughter S~ finds and purchases her pattern and fabric with help from daughter L~. I free up a few hours during the week to start cutting pieces. But by Friday afternoon it is crunch time. My labor begins in earnest. Still, I am delighted, excited, happy to get away from the demands of earning a living and spend a few precious hours with the sewing machine, my daughters and Maui, our kitten.

Friday afternoon - this peice was re-done three times. Too much to explain here.


Friday midnight - just me and my late night companion. 50 mg in 16 oz.


Saturday 7:00 AM - oh how lovely was the morning.


Saturday 10:00 AM - daughter S~ leaves with the group for Prom breakfast and afternoon 4-wheeling.
L~ and I take a break and go to IHOP for the International Passport. “We’ll have the Swedish pancakes with eggs over-easy, and will you please substitute hash browns for the meat? Thank you very much.”

Saturday Noon - My friend texts my cell phone: "We're on a boat in San Diego harbor - how about you?"
My response: "in the living room with 14 yards of tulle . . . and a kitten."

Saturday 4:00 PM - L~ is the hair stylist.















She says, “This is how we get a little volume going.”

Saturday 5:30 PM - another fitting.


Next comes what I call: prom dress “transition phase.” The boyfriend is supposed to arrive in fifteen minutes.
The zipper foot on the sewing machine is wrong for the type of zipper I am putting in. I mutter sh#@! under my breath several times and want to curse the powers that be for getting me into this situation in the first place. Unlike childbirth, however, one has no one to blame for the condition but one’s self. So I blame myself and wonder why, once again I jumped into the heady excitement, the passion, if you will, of the prom dress without so much as the blink of an eye.

Maybe it’s because I knew this would be my last prom dress, my youngest child’s final high school dance. There is some willingness to do “just one more” when one knows it will be the last, don’t you think?

The boning intended to be threaded through seams in the bodice (providing support and form - like a corset in days past) is a bother. I pull it out, attach the lining to the bodice piece, tack it in place and call it good.

Daughter L~ points out that if I would have started sooner I wouldn’t have all this pressure at the end. L~ is newly married and has no children. Perceptive as she is, she doesn’t make that vital connection about what it is like to be the sole breadwinner, mortgage-payer, cook, gardner, mentor, protector, seamstress, blah, blah, blah . . . whine, whine, whine . . . anyway, you get the picture. I find myself thinking about what she may find herself doing over the next twenty years and I take her words of wisdom with a grain of salt.

Anyway, the date arrives, S~ is crying because I’m still Jerry-rigging the zipper. She is certain that her life is over and is willing to abort the dress entirely. But we end up using a couple of safety pins. She dries her tears - eventually - and is off to meet up with the rest of the prom group at her boyfriend’s house. (I won’t talk here about his mom calling to see why I’m taking so long with the dress.) I tell S~ I’ll see her later at promenade and send L~ behind her to snap photos of the gathering group.






























     I tidy up the “delivery area” then collapse for a moment in the quiet of my living room. Maui jumps onto my aching belly and purrs her way to sleep. In a few minutes I’m in the shower, then heading to Beto’s for late dinner with L~ and her husband before going to promenade to take more pictures of my baby and her dress. Guess which creation I am most proud of?

Somewhere In the midst of all of this I mention with nostalgia that this is my last prom dress. L~ suggests that maybe I will make some for her daughters one day . . . hmmm . . .

Let me think about that.