Wedding Dress Upcycling
Brenda’s Idea - A Purse from a Dress
Brenda’s wedding photo, 1978.
My friend Brenda shared with me that her granddaughter’s wedding was coming up and asked if I could make a purse for her out of Brenda’s wedding dress. I am a big fan of upcycling (making new things from old things) and legacy items, so I was immediately on board! I loved the idea, but had never created a bag like the one she had in mind. We did some research to find a pattern that may work. We ended up finding this tutorial for a lined drawstring pouch by Pam on her “Threading My Way” blog, then I modified the instructions in order to make a larger bag. If you’d like to try making a project like this, I would recommend Pam’s instructions, they were great! I’ll note the few changes we made below.
Brenda had the dress professionally cleaned first. Then, after taking photos of the original dress for posterity's sake, I carefully went to work on cutting the pieces I’d use to make two bags, one for each of her granddaughters. This was the nerve-wracking part. I think I may have held my breath the whole time.
Materials for one drawstring purse:
Wedding Dress
Scissors, straight pins
Sewing machine, thread
Two 10x12 inch pieces of exterior fabric
Two 10x12 inch pieces of lining fabric (we purchased an off-white satin)
We chose to use three buttons from the original dress
Two 30” pieces of cord or ribbon to make the drawstring
Pieces cut for the exterior and lining of the purse.
Two exterior layers pinned and ready to sew.
Modifications
In addition to the size of the entire bag, I made these modifications to Pam’s instructions due to working with a wedding dress:
For the exterior fabric of the bag, I actually used two layers that were originally on the dress since the very outer layer was see-through. I treated them as one piece of fabric for the sake of the instructions.
The cord I used ended up fraying when cut, so I put a small piece of clear tape around the end and trimmed to clean it up, then tied a knot to combine the two pieces together to ensure they did not fray more.
We chose to use buttons from Brenda’s dress to embellish the bag. I sewed one onto the front flower on each bag and sewed two more on the ends of the drawstring cord.
Lining and exterior pieces sewn and ready to combine.
Bags after sewing the lining and exterior, and topstitching around each opening.
Final versions of the two purses!
We were both delighted at how these turned out! Thankfully, Brenda said they looked just like she imagined them. I’m thankful that she allowed me to be a part of bringing such a special gift to life. I love that her granddaughter is going to have this be a part of her own marriage ceremony - how amazing!