The loss of a baby is one of the most heartbreaking events a parent can experience. Often, it leaves parents feeling suffocated, hopeless and broken. For many, a way to honor their little ones is by dressing them in a special memorial or burial gown. A local seamstress who transforms wedding dresses into these beautiful gowns is providing comfort and hope to families across the country.
Bonnie Kalahar has been sewing wedding dresses into angel gowns for three years now. She never meets the families, but her work touches their lives. She says she doesn’t know how to explain the beauty of her work to those who haven’t lost a child, but she does know what it means to her.
Her work is a labor of love. She turns wedding silks and satins, beads, pearls and lace into small, delicate angel gowns for infants who are born too early or pass away after birth. She also makes matching blankets and cap/bonnets for each of the babies she creates. She has been donating the gowns to Sparrow Hospital in Lansing for the past three years. She has also sent her creations to hospitals in four other states and around the world.
She first learned about the need for the angel gowns when her cousin’s family lost their baby at 23 weeks gestation. She was stunned to find out that hospitals had to purchase these gowns for infants who died before they were born, or if they did, it was at a significant cost. Her grandmother helped her start the nonprofit Sunshine State Angel Gowns and she now has volunteers who help with the sewing.
Each gown is a special work of art. Kalahar adds beads, lace and even embroidery to each gown she makes. She also sews little vests and bow ties on the boys’ gowns. The gowns she’s made so far this year have been for a few girls and a handful of boys, but she has plans to make more as the season progresses.
Some of the gowns she has made this year were for babies in the NICU, including a Camden mother who lost her son Noah after an emergency C-section. Haley Clark told WESH that the simple angel wrap her son was wrapped in gave her and her husband peace and comfort.
A woman who lives in Hot Springs Village, Arkansan, has turned the first floor of her home into a workshop where she and volunteers create these tiny angel gowns. She’s supplying them to hospitals in Arkansas and in Idaho, Washington, Oregon, Montana and Colorado. A man in Puyallup who read about her work in a newspaper column was touched, and he gave his wife’s wedding dress to the project. The gowns are now being shipped to families in those areas and all over the world. They are a beautiful reminder that no matter where you live in the world, no one should be left without a beautiful gown to remember their baby.