Crosby Still Sewing Strong At 81
Cleo Crosby of Noel has shared in some of the most special occasions of people’s lives by making hundreds of wedding dresses over the years, as well as prom dresses, costumes and more.
Crosby’s father died when she was 2 years old and her younger brother was 5 months old. Her mother relied on sewing to support the family, so Crosby learned to sew at a young age.
“She didn’t really teach me, I just picked it up,” she said. “I made doll
clothes and little pillows — just odds and ends. I liked to paint on fabric and I would paint the pillow tops. I made wedding pillows and I would paint or embroider on them. I was about 14 when I made my first one. I was 18 when I made my first wedding dress.”
Crosby and her husband, Oman, moved to Noel in 1966. The couple had two daughters and three sons. She sewed dresses and blouses for her daughters. Her sons liked Western shirts, which she painted. Her favorite costume she ever made was a Big Bird costume for a Christmas play the year one of her sons was in first grade. It delighted the children when the school janitor appeared in it. The costume was borrowed several times, she said.
A unique thing about Crosby’s sewing talent is that she rarely relies on a store-bought pattern to complete a project. For many of the wedding and prom dresses she has created, a photo has sufficed for her to make her own patterns. Other times she has gotten a good look at the dress and sketched something, she said. She usually makes her own patterns out of newspaper. “I play around,” she said. At times, Crosby has outfitted entire wedding parties, including bridesmaids’ dresses, bow-ties and cummerbunds for the groomsmen and even mother-of-the-bride and -groom dresses.
One wedding dress that a bride wanted featured lace covered in pearls. The pearl-covered lace was very expensive, so Crosby said she would sew the pearls onto less expensive lace one at a time. She sewed 4,674 pearls onto that dress. Furthermore, she has made that same dress seven different times, she said. “It was fun,” she said. In another instance, a girl picked out a prom dress that cost $675, and her father refused to pay that much, but Crosby made the dress for $62.
“Everybody thought she’d talked her dad into buying it,” she said. “It was neat knowing I could make it look as expensive as the real thing.”
Additionally, Crosby has made band uniforms, including the first band uniforms Pineville ever had, she said. She has made majorette jackets, flag costumes, flags, banners and cheer-leading uniforms for five different schools. She also worked nine years for a dance studio making costumes for recitals.
“That was fun because she didn’t care how much it cost,” Crosby said.
Now she has tubs full of scraps that she likes to use to make princess dresses for little girls to play dress-up in. She cannot sew on black anymore because, at 81 years old, she has lost most of the sight in her left eye.
Crosby has other activities going on as well. She was chairman of the Senior Citizen Center Board for 13 years and now is a regular attender at the McDonald County Senior Citizen Center. She is on the Noel Housing Authority Board and is chairman of the OATS bus board.
“I’ve had a lot of hard times and hardships, but I’ve been really well blessed,” she said. “I’ve had a fun life. I’ve really had a blessed life. God’s been good to me. He’s still being good to me.”