Wedding Dress Quilt

This post is very unrelated to our fertility struggles, I think.

Let me begin with a little about where this idea came from.  We have a 3 bedroom house and seemingly little storage.  We have an attic but have been told to not put stuff up there because it is too hot and it's in an odd location - the "porthole" is in our master bedroom closet!  ODD huh?  So over the years we have cleaned and boxed and cleaned and boxed and made storage in a variety of places in the house and garage.  We have a two story house so we had a friend of ours make the area under the stairs a little storage place that is very handy.  And we have cleaned and boxed more.

At some point, the closet of the now guest bedroom (at some point will hopefully be the nursery) is chock full of stuff.  Organized, but still very full.  I know it needs to be cleaned out and some gotten rid of, but without a fire under my butt it is hard to take a weekend to do that.  One of the things in that closet is my wedding dress, and some of the fabric that was used to make the bridesmaid dresses.  I had a thought the other day when I was pondering what to do with stuff and how to clean it out about making a quilt out of my wedding dress and the scraps from the other dresses (I ordered extra material to give to vendors, etc. and still have a bunch left over). 

I am not a quilter in the least bit!  I have helped make a quilt ONCE in my life and I was maybe 11 at the time with most of the work done by my Grandma (Mom's mom).  I still have it and it's a great memory.  But making a quilt out of my wedding dress is a huge task.  Not to mention actually taking scissors to my dress! 

I did a little hunting online and found people that will do this but for $400-$500.  Hello, my dress cost about $300!  I can't fathom spending another $400 to have this done. 

So where did the idea come from?  Well, it would get rid of a huge box in the closet - great!  And thus get me started on the guest room/nursery clean out - great!  It would allow me to show off my dress by laying the quilt on a bed or pulling it out for some warmth - great!  And I think it would be a good use of my dress...because let's face it, any child of mine probably won't want to wear her Mom's dress from 2004 when she gets married 20-30 years in the future! 

So what is holding me back?  The cost for one.  The actual act of cutting my dress (that I have worn twice...once at the wedding and one Saturday months after the wedding when I pulled it out to see if it still fit and ended up vacuuming in it...yes I did that!  What else do you do with a wedding dress?!).  The worry that on the bed it might get ruined and then where would I be?  Ruined because we have 2 dogs and a cat who are mostly good, but have their moments.  However, I have already run my dress through the wash machine (but not the dryer) and it survived (the lady who sold it to me told me to and it didn't harm it what-so-ever)!  And the design.  The quilts I have seen online are kind of boring.  In my head I have a picture of the dress kind of reconstructed on the quilt with patchwork of the bridesmaid dresses behind it.  So envision the dress itself laid on the floor, cut up and then reconstructed like a puzzle in the quilt with purple and lavender patchworked together around it.  I think it would be beautiful!

This idea came to me rather recently, so am still rumbling it around in my head.  We've been married for 7 years this April and I'd love to have something better done to my dress than just up in the guest room closet in a big tupperware!

What do you think Bleaders?  To do or not to do?  And how to do?  Those are the questions!