THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, August 15, 1994 TAG: 9408150217
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Daydream Belivers
SOURCE: Patrick K. Lackey
LENGTH: Medium: 91 lines
DREAMS COME IN four categories: impossible (get real), nearly impossible (stranger things have happened), nearly possible (it could happen) and possible (it will take work).
Elizabeth A. Kunde, a 27-year-old Navy wife and mother of two, has a possible dream.
It's no sure thing, but if you talked with her about it, you'd know better than to bet against her.
She dreams of having her own shop where she would sew dresses and sell them. The shop would have a nifty name on the door, something like Elizabeth's, and the dresses would bear her label, still to be designed.
But she won't let her dream take her from her home. It's a sick world, she says, so she plans to stay at home while her 11-month old son, Ryan, and 5-year-old daughter, Alexa, grow up.
To earn money in her townhouse near Virginia Wesleyan College, she cares for two children almost full time and two children part time, plus her own. At night, she sews dresses at a table in the small family room off the kitchen.
But she has figured a way to keep her dream at home. All that's blocking her is that too-familiar mountain . . . money.
She and her husband, Paul, who recently made petty officer first class, need a house with a large attached garage that they could turn into her dress shop. Elizabeth's children would be close at hand. Customers would never enter her house. The garage door would bear the shop's name, something nifty, like Elizabeth's.
Her dresses wouldn't be high fashion. They would be like the ones she makes and sells now, personalized with certain touches, perfect for heirlooms.
Kunde made her first dress four years ago for her daughter, then age 1. Children's clothes in stores struck her as cheaply made and high-priced, so she set out to sew her own, using a 30-some-year-old Kenmore inherited from her grandmother.
Two things immediately amazed her:
Sewing was fun. Back in high school in Wisconsin, she said, ``sewing wasn't cool.'' What was cool was shopping, which she did a lot with her two sisters and mother.
Her hands seemed to know how to sew. The instructions confused her, and she didn't know the names of different materials, but as she put her daughter's dress together, her hands seemed to know what to do. She remembers thinking, ``I can do this.''
The first dress was heirloom-style, with a petticoat and lace collar, heart-shaped buttons and a little pink bow.
Soon she was making quilts for Christmas presents, drapes for the windows, pillows for the bed. Anything she could make cheaper and better than she what she could buy, she made.
She became creative.
``I pretty much go creatively nuts once I get the material cut,'' she said. ``I do whatever I want to do. I am not a cookie-cutter seamstress. I don't like to do duplicates. I like to make each of my pieces original somehow.''
In January 1992, her church, Bayside Presbyterian, got a new choir director, whom she calls ``Chris Watkins, the saint.''
``He's one of those people,'' she said, ``if he asks, you jump.''
He learned of her sewing prowess and began having her make complicated costumes for the church's Broadway-type shows and madrigal dinners.
Sometimes, she said, every nail in her townhouse has a costume hanging from it.
Gradually she got more and more orders for dresses, often for children, though she also is working on gowns for a bridal party.
She never advertises. ``I don't want everybody knocking on my door,'' she said. They could come to a garage shop, but not to her house.
She calls her dream ``the lottery dream.'' She just has to win the lottery, buy the house with the big garage and sew to her heart's content, with her children near at hand.
``I would sew for charities,'' she said. ``I would sew for the homeless.''
But could her dream come true without winning the lottery?
``Yes,'' she said, ``somehow, some way, I will have my name on the door. If and when . . . not if, when . . . it happens, my sister will design my logo.''
When she's sewing, she said, she's like her Paul at his computer. People talk to her, she said, but she doesn't hear.
``It's such fun,'' she said. ``The best part is to see what I did on who I made it for.''
Her prices vary, she said. She tries to make $7 to $10 an hour. If she makes a mistake, she said, she doesn't charge for rework. For her church, she charges less. ILLUSTRATION: Color staff photo by Ian Martin
Elizabeth Kunde and her children, Ryan, 11 months, and Alexa, 5,
model some of the clothes she's made in her Beach home.
by CNB