Instead of brides carefully folding their wedding dresses to store them away for years, a handful of seamstresses across South Jersey are putting the pieces to good use. They’re helping grieving parents honor their lost babies by turning the dresses into tiny burial gowns known as angel gowns.
It’s a small act, but a meaningful one, for the thousands of families who lose their babies each year. The garments are offered to hospitals, birthing centers and funeral homes free of charge. Those who receive them say it brings a sense of peace to see their baby wear a custom-made outfit made from a piece of clothing that once represented hope and happiness.
A few months ago, nurse Judi Gibson published a column in her local paper seeking seamstresses to help her make these gowns for the babies who are stillborn or die in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). She had seen the need firsthand. Her own son was born at 27 weeks premature and died in the NICU.
The column prompted an amazing response. Within two weeks, Mangiaracina had received 56 donated dresses, and she’s now supplying them to hospitals in Spokane and Coeur d’Alene as well as to other states, including California, Texas, Oregon, and Minnesota. She’s also received donations of fabric and notions to help the volunteers who sew the gowns.
For Edith Clark, a retired labor and delivery nurse who lives in Hot Springs Village, it was the perfect way to honor her own son who was stillborn four years ago. She saw a story about the angel gown program in a newspaper and knew she had to help.
She started Tiny Angel Gowns in 2009, before she and her husband retired to the village. The nonprofit, which now has 280 providers from the Northeast to the Midwest and South, makes boy and girl burial outfits in five different sizes — fitting the tiniest preemies up through full-term infants. It also makes hats and diapers, as well as tiny fleece buntings for babies too small to dress.
Lee and her fellow seamstresses often add details to the angel gowns, stitching phrases like “heaven’s angel” onto them. They’ve even sewed antique buttons from their grandmothers’ collections on to some of the outfits, and they’re starting to sew little bells into each outfit. The idea was inspired by the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, in which Jimmy Stewart’s character rings a bell after he helps a heartbroken family in need.
The group, called NICU Helping Hands, now has 44 seamstresses who sew the outfits. Several have volunteered their time to deliver the outfits to hospitals in the area, including Baptist, UAMS and Ouachita Memorial in Camden. More are stepping up to volunteer, too. They’re hoping to reach as many hospitals as possible, and a website is being developed that will direct grieving parents in need of an angel gown to their closest provider. To learn more about donating a dress or volunteering to sew, visit the group’s Facebook page.