Heirloom Sewing

Denise Moseley’s two teen daughters do not want their mother to make their future wedding gowns. “That is a big, fat, ‘No,’” Denise says. “We’re going to try on all the wonderful wedding dresses we can!”

That’s not to say that, given the chance, Denise would not create the most perfect gown her daughters could ever dream up. Denise, a mom of four teenagers – Jamie, 18, Caroline, 16, Matthew, 15, and Catherine, 12, all students at The Kinkaid School – has been dabbling at sewing all her life.

“When I was a little girl, my mom,” who sewed, “would just hand me a bag of scraps, some thread and a needle. I would make things and sell them for fun. I was always fascinated with my mom’s sewing machine and always drawn to beautiful fabric. I brought a sewing machine off to college. I would make the occasional sundress and these wild-colored drawstring shorts called Jams for my friends and myself.”

Long past her Jams days, and beyond her post-college days in pharmaceutical sales, Denise found herself looking for a classic white dress for her eldest daughter’s portrait. “When Caroline was 5, we found this wonderful artist – I spent half a year researching portrait artists. Now the mission was, ‘What is my daughter going to wear?’”

SUGAR AND SPICE Grier Hampton is one of the lucky babies to have been gifted a Denise Moseley heirloom dress. 

In the fashion you’d expect from someone who researched portrait artists for six months, Denise went on a mission. “Caroline was going to be immortalized in this painting forever,” Denise says. “I wanted a timeless look.” The “giant lace collars” that proliferated in children’s stores did not fit Denise’s vision. So she decided to make what she couldn’t find.

“I poured myself into researching the lost art of heirloom sewing,” she says. “I read books on couture sewing techniques. I started buying antique christening gowns to see how they were constructed. I looked at paintings from the late 1800s – John Singer Sargent’s, for example. That was the era I loved, and I loved the clothes from it.” Denise also went to the International Quilt Festival in Houston and combed eBay for fabrics, coming upon a “textile broker” who helped her find fabric that was originally intended to be used for a woman’s skirt in the 1800s. “It was hand-embroidered cotton lawn, a very fine cotton,” Denise says.

“From there, I designed a dress that would be period-correct. There are no buttons on the straps. It is all drawstring and ribbon, French-seamed, antique laces. Everything you would find in an heirloom dress.

“It is difficult to find patterns for this type of dress because they were traditionally handed down, not commercialized. So I drew it out, made a muslin mockup, tried it on her to be sure it would fit, and then the muslin became the pattern. I was determined to have a double-puffed sleeve on the dress, but I didn’t know how to make a double-puffed sleeve. I had a beautiful antique christening gown that I had to take apart just to figure out how that sleeve was constructed. It was 12:30 at night, and I was working on it, thinking about the woman who made that dress, saying, ‘I’m so sorry! I’ll put it back together!’”

LOST ART, FOUND Denise Moseley has brought the centuries-old art of heirloom dress-making back to life. (Photo: lawellphoto.com)

Denise spent about a month – in her spare time as a mother of four very young children – working on that first dress. “It was quite a project,” she says. “A labor of love.”

When she finished, Denise found that she had a passion for heirloom sewing. “I couldn’t get enough,” she says. “I subscribed to magazines, collected antique gowns, bought beautiful fabrics and laces and learned all these embroidery stitches.”

Denise went on to make a dress for her younger daughter, and also made little linen shirts and John-Johns for the boys. And then, she began making dresses to give away. “I only do it for people I really love,” she says. “I’ve lost count of how many I’ve given, but it’s at least 10. The last friend I gave a dress to took it and had it shadowboxed, which was a huge compliment. It’s now hanging in her little girl’s room.”

Denise’s passion remains strong. “I still have a lot of extra fabric from each girl’s dress, so I will make christening gowns for their future children that will literally be cut from the same cloth as their mothers’ portrait gowns. As the oldest, Jamie will get the gown all four children were baptized in. And for Matthew, I have already sourced a pattern and am going to make his baby’s gown by hand.

“I just have to teach myself how to do hemstitching.”