Ayaka Hurtado Ishinabe (9) carefully threaded a needle through her petticoat, painstakingly hand sewing 13 layers of ruffles. Slowly, she was bringing her dream quinceanera dress to life.
Hurtado began sketching out her own design in March, but she knew she would have a long road ahead of her. The dress’s off-the-shoulder golden sleeves would have to bloom from a black and gold corset; her petticoat of red and purple ruffles would be covered halfway by a layer of black fabric, painstakingly embroidered with gold atop the ruffles. Tying it all together, a large black bow flecked with more gold would span across the intersection of the corset and skirt.
“I’d never made a dress before, or really made an [article of clothing] before, but I’ve always loved and been into art,” Hurtado said. “More recently, I’ve been into designing, and when this kind of opportunity came, it was amazing.”
With her 15th birthday approaching, Hurtado had begun searching for the perfect dress, but soon realized that the prices were outside her budget. This obstacle, paired with her passion for fashion and design, made her decide to take on the challenge of making the dress herself.
“Quinceanera dresses are really expensive, so I was telling my dad, ‘I will make the dress,’” she said. “I’m ambitious, and I was willing to make my dress so that I can have one in my budget. A month [or two] ago, when we went to a dress store, they had a dress for $800. It was beautiful, and it could fit, but [it made me] realize how much I really wanted to make my own dress.”
Hurtado’s birthday passed by in a whirl, but her quinceañera was still to come.
“My birthday was actually quite a while ago, on April 12, so we’re cramming,” she said. “It’s been a rocky road, but hopefully [the quinceañera will be] by mid-June. There’s a lot to do, but I think we can work it out.”
As Hurtado designed the dress, she said that she was inspired by the ones she saw in a quinceañera dress shop, along with Cruella de Vil’s character and dressmaking in Cruella.
“It was interesting to see how well she pulls herself together and presents herself in front of others and she does it in such a fabulous way,” Hurtado said. “Even though she’s not the richest person in the world, she improvises and her creativity is what inspired me. She just makes things from scratch. The colors she wears are [also] what inspired my dress.”
The largest struggle Hurtado said she encountered was designing a dress that aligned with her expectations.
“My goal when I was designing [the dress] was to have something unique and something that defined me, something that was not like any other dress out there,” she said. “That was probably my biggest blockade when designing. I really wanted something different and unique, so I was aiming for something bold.”
After the design process was finished, it was finally time to make the dress, but Hurtado had already run into a large roadblock: she didn’t have a sewing machine. She had originally planned to use her mom’s, but found that it was broken. Even then, she was determined to achieve her goal.
“I was talking to my friend about my dress and she said there’s a sewing machine in the library,” she said. “That was great, and ever since then, I’ve been using it.”
In her quest to make her quinceañera dress, Hurtado said that Westview librarians, Jennifer Radosevich and Sheller Doniyie, have been very helpful.
“I really appreciate the librarians,” she said. “From the very beginning, they helped me figure out how to use a sewing machine and trusted me to take one home. There are people in the world who have really kind hearts. They didn’t even know me, but they knew I had a big project to work on, and I’m honored that they let me use their space.”
Starting April 7, Hurtado said the journey of making the dress alone — not including the design time — spanned nearly two months. There were troubles along the way, but nonetheless, the dress began to come together.
“I didn’t know the techniques at all, so I was pretty nervous getting into it,” she said. “[Creating] the ruffles and [sewing] them onto the dress was the longest process, so when I actually started putting the first layer onto my dress, I was like, ‘Wow, this is actually coming together. This is actually happening.’”
Although this was Hurtado’s first time sewing an article of clothing, she said the support and motivation of others kept her going.
“[My] ambition and the fact that there’s so many people who have supported me through the process was motivating,” she said. “My main motivation was doing it for myself, but when I felt like giving up, it was the people who helped me and their support that kept me going. It’s not just that I want to do this for myself, but I can’t let them down. I have to keep doing this because there are people who expect this to get done.”
As she reached the end of her dress-making journey, Hurtado described the experience as one that held special significance to her quinceañera.
“[Making the dress is] awesome,” she said. “I love it. It’s a lot of stress at times, but when I’m working [on the dress], it’s really calming actually. If I didn’t make my own dress, then I feel like it wouldn’t feel as personal and special to me. There’s just something behind doing it myself, wearing my own dress to this huge event, this coming of age.”
