Clothes are tiny, loss is immense

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This article was published 08/03/2020 (2193 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As she puts the final touches on a tiny white satin baby hat, Vicky Isliefson takes comfort that her stitches may ease the pain of a grieving family she will never meet.

The seamstress for Manitoba Angel Dresses cuts up wedding dresses worn on someone’s happiest day and turns them into tiny outfits for families preparing to bury their infants.

“It’s part of life and it’s going to happen,” says the retired math teacher who recently moved to Stonewall from Wichita, Kan., where she was involved in similar volunteer sewing.

“When I do this I feel I’m making this a little easier for someone.”

The non-profit organization’s goal is to provide tiny handmade gowns, hats and blankets packaged into a layette to any Manitoba family experiencing a stillbirth or prenatal loss. They also provide keepsake pouches containing a tiny beaded bracelet attached to a condolence card.

“There’s no cost to families, funeral homes or hospitals,” co-ordinator Diane Monkman says of the handmade products the organization attempts to provide to every hospital, nursing station and funeral home in the province.

“We hope we’ve closed that gap and we hope that have no families missed.”

First formed in 2014, the organization regrouped under the joint leadership of Monkman and Winnipegger Susan Bruce in 2018, who then formulated a plan and distribution system to ensure grieving parents had access to their tiny gowns and hats.

The group of about 100 volunteer sewers, knitters and beaders across the province, including groups in Dauphin and Thompson, produce four sizes of fully lined gowns with back ties for infants as small as 1.5 pounds to about 8 pounds, providing families with alternatives to buying doll clothes, or burying their child with no clothes at all.

That effort to be accessible resonates with one of their volunteers who lost a grandchild several years ago and discovered later the parents were not offered anything beyond a blanket for their baby. She now makes it her mission to tell people about the clothes and keepsakes offered by Manitoba Angel Dresses.

“I talk about it to everyone just because I know you can go to hospital and have a baby and not be offered anything,” says Jo, a Bird’s Hill resident who didn’t want her last name used to protect the privacy of her family.

The group also makes fully lined wraps for infants too tiny to dress and small drawstring bags, called pathology pouches, for early miscarriage remains. All of their products are produced in smoke-free and pet-free environments.

Although the group sews and knits for the tiny babies they call angels, it would be easy to make the case that the volunteers themselves are worthy of halos and wings, says chaplain Pat Fallis of Saint Boniface Hospital.

“The angel dresses are such a wonderful thing to offer (mothers) because it gives us a sense of doing something tangible beyond what words can do,” says Fallis, who works exclusively with women and children.

Operating on a tiny annual budget of less than $3,000, volunteers bring their sewing skills to the effort, but they also offer their compassion and empathy by providing these tiny outfits to families facing a difficult loss.

“I think what keeps everyone going is to help the grieving families,” says the retired nurse, who suffered two miscarriages decades ago and more recently lost one young adult daughter to illness and another to an accident.

“I’m sure everyone who helps out has been touched in one way or another by loss.”

Bruce keeps careful records of the completed hats, gowns, wraps and pouches in large binders, using the dining room of her Charleswood home as operation central for the organization. A road map of Manitoba hangs on one wall, with pins marking the locations which already have kits of their layettes. The kits contain layettes of various sizes, wraps, pathology pouches and bracelets, and are tailored to the requests they receive from hospital and funeral homes, says Bruce.

Initially signing up to track the inventory of donated wedding gowns and completed baby items, Bruce’s role has grown to co-directing the entire organization with Monkman, including storing supplies of tiny knitted hats, bags of donated yarn, and boxes of blue plastic bins crammed with the donated wedding gowns in a corner of her unfinished basement.

Right now the group cannot accept any more wedding gowns, although they appreciate the offers.

“We’re still working through the hundreds we got and we want to honour those brides who donated already,” says Monkman.

Manitoba Angel Dresses does accept donations of fabric, especially flannelette for lining wraps and construction pouches. Items such as crinolines from wedding gowns, dark coloured fabrics and excess sewing supplies are listed on Kijiji to raise money for printing and packaging costs.

Seamstresses such as Isliefson work at their own pace in their own homes, removing the lace and beads from wedding gowns, and then making the best possible use of the remaining fabric to cut out components for gowns, hats and pouches.

“It takes time to try to figure how to fit (the pattern) on a weird shape of fabric,” says Isliefson, who adds little vests and matching bow ties on gowns for boys, and lace and ribbon for the girls’ gowns.

Other volunteers remove thousands of beads from heavily embellished gowns, and then string them into the tiny keepsake bracelets which fit into a small fabric pouch big enough to also store printouts of ultrasound images.

Right now, with 1,900 gowns, hats, wraps, blankets and bracelets in circulation, the organization’s biggest challenge remains getting the word out. They want people to know that when a pregnancy goes wrong or a newborn baby dies, someone has already prepared clothing and keepsakes for their little angels.

“Our hope is that baby is presented to the parents in the outfits and they can be buried in that outfit,” says Bruce.

“We’re counting on them (hospitals and funeral homes) to carry through. We get them there but we’re counting on them to give them out.”

brenda@suderman.com