After searching for a junior-year homecoming dress, senior Darcy Brudenell found the perfect one online. But there was one flaw.    

“I found this beautiful dress on this website, and I was like, ‘I want this so bad, but it’s $500,’” said Brudenell. “I was like, ‘You know what would be crazy, is if I made this. I could probably make this.’ And I started sketching it out and planning it.” 

Brudenell kept her dress in the fashion classroom so her teacher could check in on her progress.

“It’s amazing working with her,” said Stefanie Basford, career and technical education teacher. “Her brain is always going, and she’s always coming up with new, innovative, creative things to try. And I love her desire to push herself to learn something new every time she does something.”

After successfully sewing her junior-year homecoming dress, Brudenell continued to sew her dresses for school dances. She is making her prom dress.

Brudenell was adding the finishing touches to her senior-year homecoming dress before leaving for pictures. 

“The entire top of it was hand-ruched,” said Brudenell. “So I had to sew like a million lines down the piece of fabric and then hand pull it and make sure it was all consistent. … People would just be like, ‘How long are you gonna be doing that?’ It took me forever. So long that I was sewing the lace on the top and the bottom of the dress 20 minutes before pictures.” 

According to Brudenell’s mom Colleen Brudenell, Darcy showed interest in fashion from a young age.

“I would go in her room and find that she took some scissors and changed some clothing and shirts,” said Colleen Brudenell. “She might make a T-shirt into a tank top or turn a pair of pants into a pair of shorts … and we had some disagreements about whether I wanted her to do that or not because she was cutting up all her clothes, but she was doing it to make [her clothes] the way she wanted.”

In fifth grade, Darcy received a kids sewing machine from her parents.

“It was super basic, but I was obsessed with it,” said Darcy. “I literally wouldn’t do anything else. I would just sit in my room and sew.” 

Darcy often sews items for family, friends and members of the Glenbrook North community. She has hemmed baseball pants for a teacher’s son, ironed patches on an administrator’s daughter’s confirmation gown, made a mask for Sparty Jones and fixed a security assistant’s pillow case.

“If somebody in the family needs something repaired, she’ll just quickly repair it for them,” said Colleen Brudenell. “Or if a friend has something like a piece of clothing that has a tear in it, she’ll [fix] that, … so it’s just sort of a real gift-giving type of thing or a nice thing for her to do to show somebody she cares about them.”

Darcy plans to attend Miami University next school year, where she is majoring in marketing with a co-major in fashion. She hopes to join the university’s Fashion & Design program.

“[Sewing is] so special to me because I’m not following a pattern,” said Darcy. “I’m not following specific rules. I’m just doing it how I want to do it, and it’s so rewarding.”