So I volunteered to sew a couple things for the display. I enjoyed making a few things for our youngest model at the Novi show and thought it might be a good idea to have some fun kids' things on display at Puyallup. It's been many years since my offspring were young enough to wear this type of fun fashion and frankly I was too busy working, cooking, driving, and bleacher sitting when they were this age to do much sewing for them.
Let's start with the easy ones -- something for girls. Most of the garments were inspired by the fabric. Once I found that, then I created a garment to showcase it.
First up is a piece of soft peacock blue pinwale corduroy ... to me that said JUMPER. Found a cute print to go along with it for a blouse that had a heart and flowers motif. The perfect complement was a satin polka dot in two shades of hot pink. The heart theme was carried out with pockets. I had intended to do a banded collar with the polka dots as the collar band and the heart fabric as a stand up, rolled edge ruffle. Can we say ... not enough time? Backup plan was a satin neck binding instead.
The hearts are a single pattern that were sized in Print Layout to different percentages so that I didn't have to redesign the heart multiple times. The bottom one is a faced pocket (100%) and the top two are appliques (60% and 40%). I stitched the appliques to fusible interfacing, slit the facing and turned to enclose the seam, and pressed to the jumper before edge-stitching with a decorative blanket stitch from my machine. I wasn't totally happy with that because the interfacing "puffed" a little at the edge .... so you will see in a future post a different method that worked a little better.
Did I mention that I used two figure charts? One for a little girl and one for her doll? By cutting and sewing at the same time, it felt like the doll clothes just magically appeared instead of being a project on their own. The machine was threaded -- I just did each step at the same time.
The only real difference for the doll was that all the hearts were the same size (20% of original) and all were appliques ... I didn't think she needed a pocket.
Another technique I used was a serged rolled hem on the "cuff" of the sleeves. To create the ruffle I zig-zagged over narrow elastic so that the thread created the casing. I did that in dark pink thread so that there was a touch of pink on the bottom of the sleeves to tie in with the neck binding and the appliques. If there had been more time (there is never "enough" time) I might have done a rolled edge on the bottom of the sleeve in hot pink ... as it was, I had only light pink cone thread and the one thing I hate to do is change threads on the serger. It was a lot easier and quicker to change the thread on the sewing machine instead.
A side saga .... I sent the clothes out on Monday Feb 28, FedEx 2-day, so they would be delivered to the hotel on Wednesday ... so they could be taken to the booth on Thursday morning, the first day of the show. The "crew" leaves the hotel at about 7 am to be able to be on the vendor floor ready to go when the doors open. Ummm, my Office Max receipts showed that it would be delivered on Wed, Mar 2 ... when in reality it didn't get to the hotel until almost noon on Thursday. I have a claim filed ... currently "being researched." I will keep you updated. I don't want to pay $35 shipping for delivery that didn't happen when promised. The tracking shows that the pkg sat in Memphis all day Tuesday before being shipped out to Seattle on Wednesday morning.
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