Inspired by 'angel gowns,' Thibodaux woman makes infant burial gowns from military uniforms

Bernadette Dugas has a special way of honoring military families. She crafts gowns for stillborn babies out of cloth remnants of donated military uniforms.

The 74-year-old Thibodaux seamstress began the project nearly two years ago, creating "bereavement gowns" from wedding dresses and other cloth for anyone needing them. When someone requested one created from a military uniform, she found a distinctive mission, and she now uses her talents in this targeted fashion.

When a baby dies at birth, these gowns are what the child is presented to the family in, and often what the child is buried in.

"We don't think about these babies and what do you dress them in when you present them to the families," she said.

She listens online to Global Vision Bible Church regularly, and one sermon stuck with her. It was about using her gifts to benefit others. Soon thereafter, she was inspired after scrolling Facebook and seeing photos of "angel gowns."

Dugas began with basic materials but quickly switched to using bridal gowns to make the gowns. A military uniform was donated, and she made a gown for the Walter Reed Military Hospital. The act would forever change her mission. She named the project God's Little Warriors.

"Once I started making them, I thought, 'This is kind of cool,'" she said. "So then I started having to look for hospitals to send them to, and so, you know, you have to call the hospitals because they don't know about you. Inevitably, they all say yes."

Now Dugas exclusively crafts gowns for military hospitals both nationally and internationally. She has crafted roughly 500 gowns for 41 different hospitals. Most are within the United States, but she recently donated to Japan, Guam and Italy.

"Somehow the word got out, and now I have people from all over the country sending me their uniforms," she said.

The hospitals are reaching out to her now too.

"Like the woman in Naples, Italy," Dugas said. "She contacted me and said, 'I heard about you through the grapevine…'"

Dugas starts by gathering information on the serviceman or woman who donated the uniform. She creates a card that informs the families of who the person was. It includes the person's name, rank, title, active status and whether they are deceased.

Then she gets to work on the uniform. To avoid any wasted material, Dugas unthreads it rather than cutting it - she calls this ripping it. The process is intimate, and work carries an emotional feeling with it, she said. As she unthreads the seams of the pockets, small treasures are often buried inside like buttons, receipts, combs, handkerchiefs and coins. She said she can even tell if the person was a smoker.

"The older the garments are, the more memories and energy comes with that uniform," she said. "So as I work on these uniforms, you kind of pick up the energy. As I am ripping these uniforms, I can tell if they smoked, because you can wash a garment 100 times, but when you rip that pocket, there's stuff right down in there in that seam and sometimes you can smell tobacco."

Once the uniform is taken apart, she can lay out the fabric to imagine what the final product will look like. From there, she creates five different types of garments: four different sizes of gowns and one cocoon.

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She said she's made the uniforms out of nearly every branch of the military's uniforms: Navy, Marines, Army, Air Force, National Guard and Coast Guard. The only branch she has yet to use is the Space Force.

"I don't have any Space Force uniforms, that's the only one I don't have," she said. "I would love to get my hands on one of those. What I would give to have a Space Force uniform. That would be so cool."

For those wanting to contact Dugas, she said the best way is through her Facebook page God's Little Warriors: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100089685444109.

This article originally appeared on The Courier: Louisiana woman creates gowns for stillborn babies out of military uniforms