Little Ones

First is my crazy girl on her first day of school. No point just standing at the door smiling in your uniform when you can be hamming it up like this.

Next is my second tiny dress. Actually this is the smallest Irish Dance dress I have ever made. The dancer is a petite four year old. The skirt is from a mis-cut in the Spring. I thought it was too small to use for anything at all. The day after I ruined a piece of expensive fabric from Dubai I recieved a call from a Mum looking for a tiny dress. Isn't that the perfect co-incidence?
The rest was loosely based on Snow White. The big ovals were created for giant rhinestones that the mother ordered from the US and put on herself. The little one did well at her first big competition too. I even have a photos of her wearing a sash and on a podium!

Bright and shiny

Colourful, creative, poofy, sparkly, loud, garish (well, sometimes), fun, happy, pretty. over the top...
How else would you describe these?

Busy!

The feis season is picking up! Here are two more dresses done.

This one was shipped, so no pictures of it on the dancer yet.

This dancer requested a "Garden dress"

This one has a shawl made in the same technque as the recent scarves.

My birthday is coming up and for it I get a day to myself to make myself something.

For a mum who works fulltime and has a pre-school child this is heaven itself!

p.s. the hat wasn't accepted into the show. Oh, well...

Another Irish Dance dress

This one has a skirt in poly shantung rather than plain satin. I used a 4 thread rolled hem on my serger to create the turquoise line. The previous dress shown was serged over a ribbon. This one is more balanced from front to back of the ruffles. This aspect is important as both sides show.

Just so I am posting something

I have been working as much as I can. Monday was the first day I actually felt better and Tuesday/Wednesday saw that trend continue.

I finished this dress today in order for it to be worn at the All Irelands in Killarney in the next week or so.

I had a great time adding rhinestones, especially to the sleeves. The dancer looked lovely in it as well, but I only have pics with her face in them so I won't post any yet.

Another dress completed

This dress turned out very pretty. I cannot take much design credit as the mom and dancer drew it up and picked out many of the fabrics. I had to make a few changes so it would be workable, but they did most of it. The first pic is in incadescent lighting and shows the colours better.

The flowers on the skirt are digitised. I had a few left over so I made brooches from them. You can see one on the cape in back. For the peplum I embroidered the flowers out on a metallic silk. The base is white velvet over a layer of cotton fused satin. The flowers were cut out, then satin stitched down on the velvet. The peplum was then backed with satin and edged in a silver satin stitch. The silver is very subtle in the dress. I don't love it but the dance mom does and that is what counts.

I think the curly ruffle is cute. This is the first time I used straight grain fabric instead of bias for that type of ruffle. I did a three thread rolled hem edge over 30 fishing line using embroidery thread in the looper for a bit of sheen. There are three ruffles in a very sheer white organza, so I treated them as one to make them more opaque. I gathered them together, first using the pleating/gathering foot, then by using a thread to pull them in more. It worked just as well as, if not better than the bias type. I will use this technique again.

Satin Stitch lattice

I photograph a lot of my sewing to document the inner construction. I have recently emptied the camera so I am posting various techniques of the most recent Regionals season. For this embroidery I consulted the talented Summerset. She uses a lot of lattice in her wearable art pieces so I asked for some advice, which she graciously provided.

Lattice satin stitch all-over embroidery

The pattern is on left. On the right is a tracing on reverse on right. Again I have used a satin fused with cotton interfacing for the base, with the upper fabric in a cotton velvet. The darts are marked on the bodice and thread traced through all layers.

I sewed on the pink applique at neckline to have an end point for the embroidery. Sometimes you end up with a gap otherwise. The straight stitching lines follow the grid. This stablizes the layers and shows where to stitch.

Keeping the line straight to do the stitching was a challenge for me. I wanted to stitch at an angle. I also found it better to stitch over the straight line with the line being just covered at one side by the stitching. If I tried to centre it I got crooked.

I did not go through the dart area because I wanted to do as much as possible in the flat. I left one square blank on the side of the dart and then finished the stitching once the darts were sewn.

The stitching in flat nearly completed. I kept missing areas and would have to go back to them.

The darts are sewn, the fused satin was trimmed away and the dart was catchstitched open.

Dart is sewn and the gap in embroideryshows. It looks like my lines match up-Yay!

Stitching complete, but the bodice hasn't been trimmed to size yet. This dress is still in production, so I will get some pictures up once it has been completed.

Reverse applique tutorial

Sometimes it is easier to do large chunks of applique in reverse. The fabrics cut slightly larger than needed and are laid down on the top. They are then straight stitched from behind and trimmed to shape. The technique works especially well with blocky shapes. Finer shapes require more finicky cutting.

Here is the pattern on the left. On the right is the design drawn onto the back of a piece of interfaced satin. I use this as a base for the applique. I have used a soft yellow to enhance the warm undertone tone of the white used in applique.

Pieces of fabrics are laid on top and stitched from behind following the design drawn onto the under fabric. Depending on the fabric, I will often use a spray adhesive to hold the fabrics in place. The gold sequin is called "mirror sequin fishscale". The sequins actually overlap like the scales of a fish. It is a pain to work with, but is spectacular under stage lights. I always wear safety glasses when using this fabric.

I used a co-ordinating teal velvet and metallic silk with the coral and gold, all laid on top, stitched from behind then trimmed away. This way you do not get texture show-though onto the uppermost fabric.

The white design was done in positve applique. The design was drawn onto a stiff interfacing, cut and spray glued into place. I basted it down before satin stitching the entire design in a fairly robust satin stitch. The finer design lines dictated a different technique. Doesn't the stitching make a huge difference?

The dancer wanted lace sleeves. This Guipure lace is heavy, so I added it after the rest of the work was done. The teal fabric under the lace also forms the upper teal applique.

The final product. In case you are wondering, that really is a solid block of rhinestones in five sizes and two colours glued down the centre front of the bodice.

My New Favourite

Done and gone-winging its way to Pennsylvania as I write. I think it is my new fave. The dancer has red hair. I hope she send photos of herself wearing the dress. The headpiece was gold with black velvet fold over elastic wrapped diagonally to mimic the piping at the neckline, sleeve edges and bottom of the black skirt panels.

Almost as exciting (to me) as getting another dress finished is my new hook on the studio's french doors. No more hangers adhered to the wall with packing tape!

Stoning

Just another quick little post about rhinestones. Look at how much they enhance the look of a dress! They end up being a design feature in their own right.

The first picture has the bodice front on the left showing the embroidery with stoning started and on the right is a sleeve panel before any sewing or stoning. What a difference!
The second photo shows the dress pieces laid out before sewing has been completed. I ended up taking it all apart, lengthening the bodice by an inch and shortening that gold sequinned lace pleated panel by an inch to improve the proportions. Altering an already stoned dress is not the easiest thing in the world.

I like to use a variety of sizes on the dresses. This one has both AB and crystal in stone sizes 20, 30, 34, 40 and 48. I have added far more since these photos were taken, so will try to do an update later on.

Sources I have used and like include:
http://www.rhinestoneguy.com/
http://www.suessparklers.com/
http://www.johnbead.com/

For Gail

The dress just before shipping. It made it to Ohio on time and was worn on Saturday.

Saved?

Sometimes you don't discover a goof up until it is too late. The motif in the first picture looks a little large for the scale of the design and the size of the dress, but the bodice was already sewn together and ready to put onto the skirt. I added a lot of crystals to the knotwork on the applique. I am not sure whether it was a save or not.

Also, the hearts on the sleeve look like the have antennae coming out of them. Ooops! Some crystals will distract from that though.

The Best Laid Plans...

I have been very busy with work sewing. Many of the fabrics we use need to be ordered from overseas and the already long ship time can be further delayed by Customs. I am not complaining about paying duty or taxes on these orders, but the delays can make deadlines difficult. The actual sewing time diminishes while the deadlines remain the same and I end up in a rush at the end.

This is the sleeve of a dress I have been working on. I took these pictures to show the difference a little extra line gives in emphasizing the under/overs of the Celtic knotwork. It looks much more finished, doesn't it?
I used a similar knotwork design on the skirt. The area was much smaller, but I wanted to maintain the scale, so I removed the two loops on either side and changed the shape slightly to fit into the background shape better. I made 10 little petal ends like this, got the dress together, sat back to admire the cohesiveness of the design...

...and YIKES! the tip of each skirt end had a horrible little smiling skull face on it!

Below is the sketch, now picture it in white on black.
Can you see it?
Just imagine the horror I found as I prepared to package this up to ship to a sweet little dancer!
I will have to remake the skirt before I can send it and, as I am already behind, I will need to stay up most of the night to do it. Ouch!

Motif Satin Stitching Tutorial

Satin stitching a motif without an embroidery machine can be a challenge. I personally cannot justify the purchase of a fancy embroidery machine and the software to digitize more than what I already have with my Janome 350E and Embird. To embroider motifs like these, which exceed my hoop size, I use a technique that makes it fairly simple.
The base fabrics are rough cut to size about 3/4" larger than needed all around. Depending on the fabric, they are either fused with a cotton interfacing or spray glued to satin which has been fused. In these examples a cotton velvet was glued to an interfaced satin underlining.
The motif is drawn to size on the pattern in marker then traced onto the rough side of a sticky backed tearaway stabiliser. Instead of using the tearaway as a backing, it creates a topper and design guide for the stitching.
Here you can see the layers of fabrics with interfacing and the motif stuck on the velvet. Velvet has a napped surface and therefore a tendency for any applique to shift, so I have quickly basted the motif down.

The motif is then satin stitched all around, filling in the design and covering up the tearaway topping. I have used two layers of a tearaway beneath as well, spray glued to the fabric. The glue helps since here is no hoop to hold things in place and the fabric gets a lot of turning. You need to be careful not to push or pull too much or the fabric will distort and pucker.

Here you can see that the right side has been stitched twice, while the left has received a third run down the centre, which blends the stitches in. I use an Omnisew machine, which is an industrial zig zag head that has been adjusted to do a compact satin stitch. The width can go up to 13mm. I have used about a 7 or 8mm width, so achievable on many domestic machines. I used about a 4 on the gold stitching below. The stitches will sink into a napped fabric to some degree, so you need a slightly wider stitch than you might think.
The white stitching has all been done.

I added some gold as an accent. A second color can give a more definite edge and correct any whiskering or shaky edges.
Here the top cuff is done, while the bottom cuff has yet to receive the gold.

This is the first time I have used the sticky stabiliser by itself. I usually use a satin applique and fill over it completely. I haven't done much of this for a while, but when I am in practise, the motifs really turn out well and makes it hard to rationalise the time and expense of buying and learning digitising.
Doesn't stop me from turning green with envy when I see the embroidery work done on those machines though.