Throughout her lifetime, Ruth Kramer sewed several wedding dresses including her own wedding outfit and two of her daughters’ wedding dresses. She also altered her youngest daughter’s wedding dress. Ruth was known for not requiring a sewing pattern and often sewed wedding gowns with only a picture of the dress for reference.
For Ruth Kramer’s oldest daughter’s wedding in 1985, she not only sewed the wedding dress, but the four bridesmaid dresses as well. Daniel Suddarth proposed to Marti Kramer Suddarth in August of 1984 and Ruth had finished the wedding dresses and three of the bridesmaid dresses by December of the same year. She waited until January of 1985 to complete the maternity bridesmaid dress for bridesmaid Geri Armstrong to ensure the dress fit correctly.
For Ruth Kramer’s second daughter’s wedding in 1988, she sewed the wedding dress, the bridesmaid dresses, and an usher dress for her youngest daughter, Alice Doane. Marti Suddarth was six months pregnant with her second child at the wedding and her dress was designed with a higher waistline to accommodate her pregnancy.
Technical Credits - CollectionBuilder
This digital collection is built with CollectionBuilder, an open source framework for creating digital collection and exhibit websites that is developed by faculty librarians at the University of Idaho Library following the Lib-Static methodology.
The site started from the CollectionBuilder-GH template which utilizes the static website generator Jekyll and GitHub Pages to build and host digital collections and exhibits.