Sun City West resident gives dress new life as a pillow

Ruth McCullough has been sewing about 70 years. As a teen, she’d sewed her own clothes plus those her mother wore to work. In McCullough’s hometown of Seattle, she sewed clothes for the fabric department’s mannequins at JCPenney and demonstrated how to sew in “invisible” zippers.

But she never had real customers until her son got married.

The printed program that was given to wedding guests thanked McCullough for making the bride’s gown and all the dresses for her attendants.

“That’s when my phone started ringing,” she said.

Although she has not lived long in Arizona, customers have found her.

McCullough displayed a pillow at April’s show and tell at Rip ’N’ Sew in Sun City West. She designed and sewed the pillow from a customer’s mother’s high school senior banquet dress, first worn at least 70 years ago.

The woman who does McCullough’s nails recommended her to this customer. The client brought the dress and asked McCullough to make something she could keep on display to remind her of her mother. The customer also wanted McCullough to preserve the appliqués on the dress front and the buttons down the back.

“You could tell from inside of the dress that it was hand made,” McCullough said, but the appliqués were done by machine.

She said it took her two to three weeks to design and three to four afternoons to sew two pillows. She made one from the dress bodice and the other from the skirt. As requested, McCullough  included the skirt front’s appliqués on that pillow front and the buttons on the skirt back, too.

She also had to custom-make the pillow forms because pillows don’t come in those shapes. Putting the pillow covers on the forms was easy. McCullough unbuttoned the pillow backs, inserted the forms and rebuttoned.

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