Cutting Into The Past Yields Truths About the Future

I stood looking at the shiny black jacquard dress, scissors in hand, considering where to make the first cut. The choir dress on my cutting table that had been worn by a generation of high school girls was recently replaced by a more stylish velvet and chiffon style. I was considering how to cut apart the old dress and transform it into something new and useful. In many ways, I was doing the same thing with my life.

It has been a difficult season at work. I knew in my heart that I’d soon be leaving the organization I’d been part of for five beautiful years and the thought of it crushed my soul. I enjoyed the work and adored my co-workers. Yet issues were brewing in the ranks above me that were, quite frankly, troublesome. I needed time to think through my options.

But where could I find time to think? My workdays were jam-packed from corner to corner with no wiggle room. I was also raising a high-school senior who was involved in choir and theater so evenings and weekends were full. And now graduation was looming.

One of the perks of my employment situation was working in an office that was less than 5 minutes from my home. So I decided to use my lunch breaks for some creative thinking time. Each day at noon I scuttled off to my house, slapped together a turkey sandwich, and retreated to my sewing room. It was there that I dissected the choir dress.

Earlier that spring at the high school PTA’s annual garage sale I had picked up a few of the decommissioned choir dresses and a couple of sad prom dresses that were discarded and left behind at parent’s houses when their owners went off to college. I paid 25 cents for each dress. During my thinking/sewing lunch breaks, I grabbed my trusty Fiskars and started cutting up those dresses, and decided to use the fabric to make dresses for 18-inch doll dresses.

No, my senior-in-high-school child was not still playing with dolls. Rather, my local sewing group was dressing 18-inch dolls and donating them to a local charity for its Christmas store. Each year, we purchase 50 dolls and make five outfits for each doll. If you do the math, you know that’s 250 outfits and a lot of sewing. So we work on this project all year long, with each member of our group making clothes at home and bringing them all together to pair and package with a doll, then ship off to our local charity to make little girls happy on Christmas morning.

Making doll clothes gives you plenty of leeway to experiment. So it was during my lunch break sewing sessions that I decided to use the decorative stitches on my machine to embellish the shiny black fabric from the choir dresses. I chose fuchsia thread and carefully stitched out eyelet floral designs onto the fabric that became voluminous skirts for these well-dressed dolls. I snipped around lace motifs from the prom dresses and used them to assemble bodices for dresses and little jackets. Hot pink satin stitching appeared on sleeve hems. It was glorious!

The entire time I was cutting and sewing I was thinking about the teens who had worn these discarded dresses and the little girls who would dress their new dolls in ball gowns made from discarded choir dresses. I also thought about my situation at work. As my trusty scissors cut through the fancy dresses I dissected and examined my career dilemma. As the fancy fabric ran under my needle I weighed the ethics of staying or going. It took me several weeks of lunch break sewing to cut up all those 25-cent dresses and transform them into dreamy doll clothes.

Through all that cutting and stitching and snipping threads and pressing seams I thought about the girls who had worn the dresses and what their lives were like now. I considered how my own daughter would join their ranks within a few short months as she prepared to fly from our nest. I thought about the little girls who would become the proud new owners of the dresses that were created from the older girl’s castoffs. And I thought about the issues I was facing at work, and made the decision that it was time for me to move on.

Later that fall, after my daughter was away at college I started a new job. A few weeks later, my sewing pals and I packaged up those dolls and their five outfits, including my upcycled dresses, and sent them off to be shared with their new owners. It all felt right. The old dresses had found a new purpose entertaining younger girls. My daughter was transitioning into adulthood and I was working for a company I could trust. My lunch breaks of cutting and stitching had brought new life from old dresses. They also gave me the clarity of mind to repurpose and revitalize my own life.