As of June, 2010, The Briar Patch initiated the "Craft and Create" give-away program. This program shares with customers flower girl dresses and dresses for girls that we are not able to sell retail.

These are girls dresses that are returned, slightly damaged, or simply the remains of style run now discontinued. If you are excited NOW about participating, please email details to brpatch@sbcglobal.net to let us know your great idea. We will then look for your order (the amount charged is for shipping only)and ship a flower girl dress as close to the specifications given as possible.

Please be aware that this is a courtesy program with very limited and varying availability. Requests for free flower girl dresses are handled in the order received and the wait time can be several weeks. Please consider this if you intend the free flower girl dress for an important upcoming event, we cannot be consistent with timing or availability. Only consider this program for special events very much in the future by several months, please.

The Craft and Create program is intended for fun and creative experimentation, to share ideas on how to repurpose a garment often thought good for only one wear. The program is not subject wear dates, delivery dates, and rush shipping/processing of any kind.

Hello Crafters and DIY dress-improvement divas. We are starting a program to recycle and educate the world about girls' fancy dresses and flower girl dresses.

This project may also be of interest to our off-beat bride customers or those who have an event with a very specific theme: Pirates? Gothic Romance? Country Farm or Ranch? Circus? Out in the Wilderness? We post to many blogs and forums and have discovered an amazingly creative population of couples getting married or families with special themed celebrations. We want in on the action, and we want to show that any fancy dress can be transformed into the perfect dress through creativity and personal stashes of fun materials: buttons, thread, glitter, dyes, paints and whatever else is stored away in plastic tubs at your home. Thus saving so many things from the trash bin and landfills. Reduce, Re-Use, Recycle, AND RE-STYLE!

Here at The Briar Patch, we often have many dresses that are returned too late for resale, have very slight damage, are discontinued and we cannot restock size runs, or are made of previous dye lots we cannot match presently. Some may be samples sent to us by our dear designers, some we have no idea how they got here.

We want to be sure these dresses go to good use, so our creative team thought, "how neat to send these dresses out free of charge, and since they cannot match exactly what someone wants in particular, let those wonderful, inventive families MAKE these freebie dresses just what they need for the special event." We all think it is a great idea. Here are the particulars:
1.) You will have to pay shipping for the dress, we will send it by USPS Priority Flat Rate Mail in box size FRB2. 2.) Our accountants worry that we will spend all our employee time packing boxes of free dresses. So, we have to charge a $3.00 handling fee. It is not a scam, it is the bare minimum to cover part of employee time involved in packing. Since we don't have to inspect, we can pack more quickly than we would with a retail order.
3.) You select the size and color of dress you wish to receive. We cannot guarantee to send anything but the correct size. We will try to match color, but if we cannot due to availability, we will send white or ivory. Remember you can EVEN DYE this dress. Get creative and make it work. If there is no dress available in your size, we will not charge shipping and you will receive a notice by email. You may have time to wait a little longer?
4.) You are obligated to share a paragraph on the order form under "comments" or "sash color" or "monogram details", anywhere on the text fields in the order form, on what is your special event and what theme or style is the planned evolution for your free dress.
5.) You must send us photos that we can use to demonstrate the versatility of any flower girl dress combined with creative ingenuity. If the event is professionally photographed, be sure it is OK to share the photos for online publishing. Send us the photographer's name and website and we will happily give credit.
6.) Send us a well written description of what you did to make your not quite perfect fancy dress or flower girl dress ABSOLUTELY perfect for your unique event.
7.)Please send us quality photos within 4 weeks of receiving your free flower girl dress. Should your event not occur that quickly, please send us a nice demo-photo or dress rehearsal photo. We will update the image when you forward photographs of the actual event. If we do not receive the description and photos of your creative artwork, we will have to charge $19.99 for the dress.
8.) Every entry must be family and child appropriate. Please do not send anything that is not healthy for children to see or wear. No horror related themes nor licensed characters as themes. Please keep Hollywood out and your own imagination in!

Here are some possibilities we thought of for this project:
Flower Girl Dresses (of course!)
Themed Birthday Parties
Costumes for Family Appropriate Plays
Make-A-Wish Foundation Wish Grantees
Graduation Parties
Projects on Historical Fashion
Projects on Characters in Historical Literature
Crafting Projects and Presentations
Dance Recitals
Dramatic or Gymnastic Horse Back Riding
Western Dancing or Square Dancing for Kids
Musical Performances
A Walk in the Park
Special Parent and Kid Time at Home (Making Something Together!)

photograph above: This flower girl dress is one that had small holes in the tulle, we glued pretty petals over it and added a simple 1 inch satin shimmery ribbon at the waist. That is SOOOOO simple, think what you can do with YOUR talent!