Keeping tabs: TCTC student creates unique dress

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The teen plans to wear her dress again this month at a career center fashion show.

By ED RUNYAN

VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF

NEWTON FALLS — Kerry Cunningham got an idea for a novel type of dress she wanted to make for herself.

After getting the idea on the Internet over the summer, Cunningham made herself a belt that used pop can tabs laced together with ribbon.

She liked it.

So the Trumbull Career and Technical Center cosmetology student and seamstress thought to herself, "Why not a dress, too?"

Starting in July and working nearly every day for about three months, the 17-year-old Newton Falls resident fashioned 4,270 tabs and pink ribbon into a one-of-a-kind masterpiece.

It was a time-consuming process, taking even longer than she imagined.

The process was simple. She made long strands out of the tabs and ribbon, then looped the strands together to form what looked like a sheet.

The only other material used in the dress was thread — to connect the two ends of the sheet together to form a tube.

Because the tabs overlap, the dress isn't see-through, she noted. But it also isn't light — or quite as flexible as the types of material usually used in dress-making.

"It's hard to sit in it, because it doesn't bend real well. But other than that, it was OK," Cunningham explained of the feel and comfort.

The answer to the bend-ability problem, she said: She doesn't sit a lot while wearing it.

Showing it off

The unveiling occurred in January, when she wore the dress to the Newton Falls High School "Tinsel" dance with her boyfriend, Kerry Cunningham who wore a similar pop-tab tie and belt.

Predictably the reaction from her friends was a great deal of curiosity and excitement. "That's so cool," most people said.

"I had a lot of people asking about it," she said.

"They were all like, 'Oh my gosh,' and they were freaking out," she said. "They liked it."

Fortunately for Cunningham's date, he had been involved in the planning for the dress ahead of time, so seeing it the night of the dance wasn't a shock.

Luke helped collect the pop tabs, as did members of Cunningham's family, and he saw the dress in progress.

When she told him he would be wearing a pop-tab tie, he said: "You're going to do what with what?"

Cunningham, who has been sewing clothes for about two years, said she has made things from other unusual materials in the past, such as a dress and purse from a bedsheet.

But the pop-tab dress is her greatest achievement to date.

"I think this is the most unusual thing I've done," she said.

Cunningham said she already has some ideas for future unusual projects.

Cunningham said the dress has been such a hit, she plans to wear it again later this month, when the career center holds its annual fashion show.

runyan@vindy.com

Monday, April 9, 2007