What I Made This Week: Wedding Dresses, Baby Clothes and a Brand New Keepsake Cap

I opened a box on camera last week with no idea what was inside.

A bride had mailed me her wedding dress. She was getting married in days, so it came in as a rush order, and I filmed myself cutting into it for the first time. It turned out to be lace. That lace is now a keepsake sweatshirt she'll be wearing long after the dress goes back in its box. If you want to watch the moment, it's here on my Instagram — it's still the thing I've made this month that I'm proudest of.

That box set the tone for the whole week. Here's what came off my machines.

Wedding dresses were more than a third of everything

I made over a hundred pieces this week across about forty different designs, and the single biggest share of it was wedding dress work.

Seventeen BRIDE keepsake sweatshirts, each one appliquéd with a bride's new last name cut from her own gown. Eleven bouquet sweatshirts, where the dress fabric becomes a flower arrangement instead of lettering. Five MRS sweatshirts in sage chinoiserie, ivory lace and a floral print. Four Mother of the Bride shirts — and one for a Mother of the Groom, because she asked, and of course the answer is yes.

The question I get most often is whether this means cutting up the dress. It doesn't, really. I only need about a 7 by 15 inch piece. Most brides send me what's left over from the hem and the alterations — fabric that was already cut off and boxed up, the parts nobody would ever see again. The dress stays whole.

All the wedding and bride keepsakes are here.

New this week: a keepsake cap

This one I'm excited about. I've been turning dress remnants into sweatshirts for a long time, but a sweatshirt is a cold-weather thing and it sits in a drawer half the year.

So I started appliquéing initials cut from wedding dress fabric onto Richardson trucker caps. A piece of her wedding day that goes to the grocery store, the ball game, the beach. I posted the first one on Instagram, and the first order came in almost immediately — brown and khaki, one single initial in the middle, thread matched to the sweatshirt I'd already made for her.

The keepsake cap is here if you have remnants sitting in a box.

Baby clothes, and all the names they carry

The other half of my week is always baby clothes and hospital blankets.

Eight curved MAMA sweatshirts from hospital swaddle blankets — though only a few actually said MAMA. This week I also stitched Mom, Dad, Papa, Pappy, and Honey. Seven more keepsake sweatshirts made from baby clothes, most with the children's names embroidered down a sleeve.

My favourite of the week was a grandparent sweatshirt with eleven grandchildren on it — every one a little stick figure with their name underneath. Eleven names. I sent a preview before I stitched it, which I'd recommend on anything that big.

There was also a keepsake tote bag sewn from baby clothes, and two memory Christmas stockings — quilted patchwork, name on the cuff, made from outfits a child has outgrown. If you want one of those for this Christmas, now is genuinely the time to ask. They take real hours and December fills up early.

Memory keepsakes are all in one place here.

Nurses, seniors, and a bit of Halloween

Hospital keepsakes keep coming: NICU sweatshirts, an OB Tech shirt, a Mother Baby Unit quarter-zip with a nurse's name and credentials on the front and baby feet stitched beside them. These are made from the swaddle blanket her own baby came home in, or from a blanket I keep in stock if she doesn't have one. Nurse keepsakes here.

Eight Senior Mom photo tees went out, all in navy — you send me your favourite picture of your senior and I put it on the shirt. That one's here, and senior season is short.

And Halloween has officially started. Orange sequin bats, a sparkly BOO, and a plaid Pumpkin Season appliqué. Seasonal designs are here.

And the ones that made me laugh

A 15-pound weighted Eeyore, with a note asking whether I could add the face stitching so he'd look like a donkey and not a cow. Fair. I could.

A dog mom memory sweatshirt made from a pet's own blanket, and a hoodie that says ADOPT in appliqué with "don't shop" in script underneath and a paw print on the sleeve. A 58 by 79 inch, 15-pound weighted blanket made entirely from fabric the customer mailed me herself.

That's the part I like about this job. No two weeks look the same, because none of you send me the same thing twice.

Want something made?

If you're sending me fabric — a wedding dress, baby clothes, a hospital blanket, a loved one's shirt — order first and I'll message you the mailing address straight away. I return every scrap I don't use.

And if you want to see this stuff as it happens rather than reading about it after, I post the process on Instagram. That's usually where things show up first.