Mother of the bridesmaid

My daughter is in a wedding again. Not hers, mind you. She’s already had her big occasion, but she is asked to attend to her many friends as they become brides. She is unlike her introverted mother who was never a bridesmaid but was instead asked to provide humorous entertainment at receptions.  

This was back when bridal parties almost never had more than three female attendants (usually sisters or close cousins) and three male attendants (ditto), and in the Sioux County Protestant weddings of the time, the reception was held in the church basement sans alcohol, sans band, and sans dancing. Hence the need for a humorous reading, I guess. 

I have a friend who, decades ago, sewed her own wedding dress and her groom’s suit. Her sisters all had home-sewn dresses patterned after her gown, and the couple got married in a county park on a beautiful May day. What can I tell you? It was the 1970s, and the wedding industrial complex had not yet been spawned.  

The attendants in the weddings of my youth had their dresses sewn by their mothers or aunts or a deft seamstress in the community. They were modest, Empire-waisted, A-lined gowns typically done up in pastel colors befitting May or June weddings. 

Now, of course, weddings rival or exceed the cost of the lowly fixer-upper I once bought, and the wedding parties at the front of the church can equal the size of a high school play cast.   

Females can purchase dresses from special websites. Brides typically specify the color of the dress, but bridesmaids are often given the freedom to choose a style for their taste and body type, so rather than going for a strictly matchy-matchy look, it’s variations on a theme. 

My daughter is buying another dress she may never wear again, this time in a rich burgundy, but it was a good three inches too long. So, she asked if I could alter the hem.  

Sure, I thought, easy-peasy. I can hem. Years ago, girls took Home Ec. In my school, it shook out as Foods (cooking) and Clothing (sewing) classes. These were considered useful skills in running a home. Gladys Greving was our teacher for these domestic arts, and she was adept at it all. Best of all, she had unending patience with an extremely chatty class. 

I took four years of sewing and made a tailored jacket in Clothing IV, and if you only looked at the finished product, it was pretty good, but the true test of a good seamstress lies inside, where only Mrs. Greving looked. I wore that B+ jacket for years with pride. 

I knew I was never destined for textile greatness. I can sew, and I can knit, but they don’t relax me. Let’s just say that the seam ripper and I are on intimate terms. Mending and simple alterations are my speed. Still, should the zombie apocalypse occur, I could figure out how to sew leaves or skins together. In other words, I may not produce fine needlework, but I can get the job done. 

This time, though, the dress threw down the sartorial gauntlet.  I envisioned a simple matter of sewing a new hem, but it was sheer fabric overlaying an underskirt of slippery, shiny polyester. Worst of all, this full skirt had a slit up the front left, and the way the two layers joined around that slit would have been slick work for a Mrs. Greving, but for my brain it was a monkey puzzle tree. 

It was too late to tell my daughter to just buy 5-inch heels, but I was tempted to baste the slit shut and see if she noticed. It's one thing to read and follow a pattern; it’s another to change the work of someone else.  

In the delightful 1966 film “The Trouble With Angels,” Rosalind Russell stars as Mother Superior at a Catholic girls school, and Rachel, one of her problematic students is struggling to finish sewing a dress. The project is a mess; the sleeves not only don’t match, they look like they are made for two different species. 

In an act of mercy, Mother Superior finishes the dress because not even Saint Jude could rescue that lost cause. I thought of poor Rachel more than once while working on this split skirt, trying to channel Mrs. Greving.  

In the end, I got it done with the help of YouTube and a lot of swearing. And the seam ripper. It’ll be fine just as long as no one looks at the inside seams.  

Joan Zwagerman appreciates good sewing and quilting when others do it. For her part, she’d much rather watch old movies.