Colors can lie!

Colors can lie! I’m not sure what these colors look like to you on your computer. On mine they look like blue, orange, and black for the fabric. In reality, the colors are a bright pink, purple, and a sparkle black fabric. I do lots of chatting with dancers over the phone and online when it comes to dressmaking, fabric selection and color. Usually I try to meet with them and find a way for us to see the fabrics and colors being selected. Sometimes it means sending swatches in the mail. It can take a while to agree on colors and fabrics for different projects. It is important not to take for granted what you might see online. Ask questions if what you see does not meet with what you expect. I have had to reassure customers that the colors they see online are not the “real” colors. It can mean a small panic attack when someone sees something they don’t expect!!

Now this sample from the same dress shows up accurately. Bright pink fabric with black stitching. So you never know! It works both ways, the dancer needs to make sure of the colors as well as the dressmaker. Just a verbal, or even sometimes photographic example may not always be enough to make sure we are all talking about the same thing!

Collaboration

I’ve begun a new collaboration with dressmaker Kira from Kirations, and Ann Donahue of Taoknitter Arts. Now working with Ann is nothing new, but it is always interesting and fun…but our new addition is very exciting. Kira makes amazing dresses. Our new arrangement includes Ann doing the digitizing, me doing the embroidery, while Kira does all the designing and construction. So far it has been a dream. Here is a peek at our first dress.

Thats the bodice from the neck down.

That is a peek at one of the sleeves.

I really do enjoy the embroidery and our triad seems to be a good combination of skills. Hopefully this will speed up dress production for Kirations, and let each of us work in the area we love best!!

Things to Learn

Now we have added some bling to this dress after our rush job to get it finished enough for her to wear to the feis. I also lowered the belt. Granted it went on much easier when it was a little bit higher, but the look we really want called for it to be at the lowest point possible. So that is where it is now. When the dress is on her body it smooths out a lot more. The girl has some curves.

Here is the back without the cape. With the belt lower it does not quite meet all the way in the back…but really that means zilch. It looks great, and we don’t worry about stuff like that.

And here is the cape, and with it comes the story of all I learned in order to make this cape. I like making creative capes. That’s a bit easier to do for solo dresses, so I usually save my creative pushes for those. For this dress I just didn’t have any brainstorms. Ann supplied us with the makings of two perfect patches with which to attach a cape, and suggested looking toward one of the sleeve designs as a possibility. Still I waited for divine inspiration….none came. For the feis we just used some leftover white fabric and quick sewed it to the patch with invisible thread and it was fine. Tara loved it. But it was too much plain white in the back, so we knew some embroidery was needed.
In spite of no creative cape karma….we pushed on. My husband actually suggested taking the long embroidered section from the bodice and using that for the cape. Tara liked the idea….and I went with it.

Sounds simple….but it’s not!!! Because it required reversing thread colors in a sequence that was already set in the machine (I could have started over from scratch…but whats to learn there????), it also required advancing through the design to get to those colors to make the change, and then getting back to the starting place….all without losing anything. I had to figure out just where to start stitching, and get to that point. Mind you I did not want to advance through the stitches one at a time in a design that has over 100,000 stitches!!! So I learned how to advance through colors, and big numbers, and then get it all set back to one stitch at a time so when there was a thread break I could take care of that a back up a few stitches rather than a few hundred!! All this may not seem like much….but trust me, it is sweat inducing!! Now of course I feel like a pro….and ask myself what’s the big deal? This was chump change on the small machine! It just all seems magnified on the commercial machine. Alas, it is done. I was successful. The cape is finished. Sadly it is too long to use the patches that we made from Ann, but I’m sure we will find another use for them. I like putting them on my bulletin boards in my sewing room. Feels like designer decorating!!

Brand New Dress

A week opened up in my schedule so I finally had time to do two things. First make Tara a new dress. Her black and pink dress was about two years old, had been let out and let down twice and was just too small. The second thing was start using the XPanto frame I purchased when I got my Toyota 9100. I knew it would take a little bit for me to start using the XPanto because I had a lot to learn about the machine so I was not in a huge rush to jump into it. But this opportunity opened up and it was the right time.

Tara and I had picked out the fabric for this dress back over the Christmas break. We happened upon a small fabric shop in Casanovia while she was visiting friends. It seemed like a quilt shop, but in their back area they had a nice selection of dress and fashion fabric that they were selling off. We found this beautiful red tone on tone silk, and then some white crepe back satin. Altogether spent about $100.00 on the fabric. So we stashed it away hoping to have time in the Spring to make a dress before the CNY feis.

Then our good friend Ann D. of Taoknitter Arts put up some new designs. I showed them to Tara and she fell in love with one of them. We talked to Ann about some changes and possible ideas. The plan was in motion. However….other work commitments had to come first. So I switched gears back to other jobs and her dress was shelved for the time being.

As life goes, things change. Sometimes you have control and sometimes you don’t. We had thought the chance to make her a new dress this year was not going to happen, and actually looked to purchase a dress at the CNY feis….there were some nice ones, but nothing that fit her. She is petite, with narrow shoulders, a tiny waist, only 5 ft tall, and well…..gifts that lots of women go to a plastic surgeon for! So we’ve never had much luck buying her a dress. But my schedule changed and this week opened up, we quick called Ann to work on the design! She was ready as well to tackle the XPanto frame, and off we went. Here are some photos from the embroidery.

This is a start of a sleeve.

Here you can see the cuff of the sleeve. All nicely finished. Both sleeves fit the XPanto with no rehooping needed!!!

This is the bodice getting started. The applique went first.


Here is the bodice all finished. The embroidery covers 2/3rds of the bodice. There was no rehooping needed, but the fabric has to be very carefully placed. For older girls that have curves it is a very thoughtful process of how to lay the fabric as flat as possible. I think with some more practice I’m going to be very good at figuring out where to sew up to and where to leave seams open for the best placement.
And what is even better is that on the same hoop we had all the pieces for the belt and shawl patches!

These are a little hard to see, but they are all there. Here are some pics of the finished dress on Tara.

This is with her dear friend before they danced.

This was after awards. She placed third in her competition. She was thrilled with her new dress, and I was thrilled with her effort.
It was great to work with Ann D. She is able to really understand what we are looking for, and then make it happen. I learn so much after each project we do together! This dress really was made in one week thanks to both our efforts, and I know that Tara will wear it with that beautiful smile on her face for as long as possible!!!

All in one Skirt Panel Construction

First the photos:

That was all of the front. Each fabric is laid down one piece at a time, the machine tacks it down, it gets trimmed, and then embroidered. This was all digitized by Ann Donahue of Feisdress. Now onto the back!

Underneath the orange fabric is two layers of Vilene sewn together. Sandwiched between the Vilene are two strips of Ridgilene that are sewn down. Right now nothing is trimmed. The machine will sew down the backing fabric (which is the underside of the skirt) and then the trimming will happen. Once the whole front and back fabrics are trimmed, the hoop will be put back on the machine, and the edges satin stitched all the way around.

The satin stitching is finished! The completed panel can now be removed from the hoop and is almost ready for skirt construction. We are doing a few final tweaks to the design of the panel, and then it will be ready to go! For the prior dresses for this school, I did each panel by hand. The only machine embroidery was the gold logo. This panel took a whole day to stitch out on the new machine. I expect that time to go down as I get better at trimming fabrics and stiffener. That is still much quicker than making each one and using the hand guided applique & satin stitching.

Just some quick photos

Thought I’d post a few photos of the work I’ve been doing recently. Here are some in progress photos of a Duffy School bodice being stitched out. This is a multi-step process that these pictures show the first part of. Ann Donahue of Feis Dress does the digitizing, and the set up for my machine. I’ve really enjoyed the new machine…learning how to use it, all of the starts and stops, most especially watching it sew!

This is the big view. I am using a border frame for this bodice. All three pieces will eventually be on this same stitch-out. Right now I just have the center front piece. The black is velvet, the orange is a yoke that will be appliqued and embroidered.

Here the machine has tacked down the applique and I am starting to cut away the excess.

I’ve lifted up the section that I have cut. Now I will work my way around the other side. Then the machine really takes off and does all of the embroidery.

This is one of the back bodice pieces. You can see the applique section is a different shape then the front bodice piece. But they are all on the same hoop! Ann is amazing with what she can fit in these hoops. Once we start stitching the skirt pieces, we will use the largest hoop available. We should be able to fit a whole skirt in one hooping!!! Now that will be something to behold…(for us slightly crazy dressmakers at least!!)

How long does a custom pattern take?

The best way to answer that question is to actually make one. So I am. Taking the measurements, of which you need many more than you would to alter an existing pattern, took about 40 minutes. If someone who was not comfortable or experienced was doing it, that could just about be doubled. I double check everything, label everything according to the drafting method I’ll be using. By having the same labels it saves time later when I am making the calculations. Even then…it needs to be as exact as possible.

I started with the back bodice. Although the dress I will eventually make with this is a very dropped waist style, the time frame I am measuring is more of a traditional look. So I am going with that.

Here is a photo of the pattern without seam allowances, or the armhole drawn in. I have a set of french curves that I will use to draw in that curve, but I want to do it at the same time as I do the front bodice. The bottom of the pattern is not quite finished for either style, but easy enough to finish off for both. Right now it is ambiguous!
This took me about 3 full hours. I checked and double checked…corrected and redrew. I believe this is all correct. And just when I got it this way…..

My darling Cassini decided to jump up onto the drafting table for some attention. Her nails make a nice natural slice in the paper right where I don’t need it. A little clear packing tape takes care of it! Reminder to self to always shut the door. But the family is home today and my son is sick, so I really wanted to be able to hear what is happening in the rest of the house.

Here is a sample of some of the calculations:

There is another whole page! And this is just for the back. On to the front bodice!

Happy New Year!

So I really took a long time off from updating this website! Thankfully it was due to lots of work…good and bad! There was all kinds of parenting going on, as well as dressmaking, and learning.

My big news is the addition of my new Toyota…and the last few weeks that I’ve spent learning how to use it! Like any new endeavor, I find it is two step forward one step back. It’s this odd combination of old technology and excellent production that I am struggling with in my head. You can’t beat the quality of the work that this embroidery machine produces. Even my learning stitch outs, are leaps ahead of things I’ve made in the past in terms of beautiful stitching. But I long for the ease of my home machine and its intuitive software and controls. Of being able to see whats happening on the machine itself…and not in some really primitive software. While learning the machine, I am also trying to learn two new software programs. One is called Forte which is an embroidery editing program ( I did not purchase the digitizing portion.) The other is Expert Stitch Manager which is supposedly capable of running the designs right to the machine and displaying the stitchout in real time. It leaves a lot to be desired…and I see the possibility of ditching both of these programs that I have spent hours learning…and going back to my trusted Embird and the good old USB drive!!! Great women before me have been very successful with this method!!!

For Murphydresses I am hoping to start taking on some embroidery only projects. I have invested in the X-Panto hoop for this machine which will give me an embroidery field the size of a screen door!!! Thats what I think this hoop looks like…an aluminum screen door…without the screen! I will be able to embroider very large areas without rehooping….ruffles will be a dream, as will large panels on school dresses. Very much looking forward to that.

Now for some photos….

I was super happy for these girls, and their school. Their dress program is off to a great start. We will continue to work together to make the dresses the best they can be.

Also very happy for the Clann Na Cara girls who had a super day at their Oireachtas. The team really enjoyed their weekend, and how much fun they had together. This is a great group of dancers who support each other and like spending time together. Here is a photo from a recent performance in December.

Not every job always goes the way you wish it would. I had a job last Fall that I really took on to help another dressmaker who had gotten sick and could not complete it. (As it was conveyed to me.) It seemed very straightforward, and although it was tough at first to get ahold of the customer…things seemed lined up to move forward. However communication is a tricky thing. While you may feel that you have done your best to communicate what you think are the terms of an agreement…that may not always be the case. Sadly, sometimes it does not become clear until too late that each person was working under a false assumption. What this does of course is make you reevaluate how your business is handled…and to strengthen the language of all agreements in writing. While I have always felt that e-mail was a good way to keep things documented…sometimes much is said during phone calls that does not make it into writing. In the future I will have to make sure that all decisions are followed up in writing for the protection of everyone. I’ve also strengthened my contracts, and will not let that portion of the business agreement slide in any situation. While contracts in this niche are not necessarily the “norm,” I have used them and will make sure in the future to never go without one again. Enough said.

Personally, I did all sorts of sewing for gifts this year. I enjoyed making the lovely tote bags for my sister and her girls, so I carried on with that for the holidays. I made custom tote bags for some of my son’s teachers and therapists. Sadly I did not take pictures of them! For the people who give of themselves each day while he is at school I really wanted to give a gift of my time and and appreciation for what they do with him. Each bag was designed with the recipient in mind….his Special Education teacher received a blue paisley tote, with a beautiful purple and blue flower design lining. It was a medium size tote that I thought would be perfect for her height, and plenty of interior pockets. For his classroom aid who has had a struggle connecting with him (really him with her) I made a classic black and white exterior and interior tote…with just a hint of red in the lining fabric. My son often sees the world as very black and white, and I thought this might be a bridge between them. For his speech therapist there was a large blue paisely tote, as she is taller than average. Long straps, with a fun small polka dot lining. When I first met her during a teacher conference I really felt like she “got” my son. So I tried to really match the tote to what I “got” from her personality! To finish up my tote bag sewing, I made two more for two of my Sister in laws. My husbands first younger sister is a no nonsense tough business woman! She is a great Mom, and really the connection that keeps our family together. For her I made a solid blue exterior with a beautiful flower print on the inside. In her job she has to be the boss….but I know the wonderful woman she is on the inside so I made sure her bag had that special touch! For my husband’s brother’s wife…I went with the classic blue paisely again. This working mom always has given me gifts that so appreciated. She has a sense of taste that is classic and trendy all at the same time! So thats what I went for.

I hope all of these special people enjoy their gifts that were made from the heart! It’s back to business now. It’s amazing how the sewing for pleasure really inspires my work sewing. Looking forward to the year ahead!

Sewing for Fun!

I recently had some time to do some sewing for fun! I’ve mentioned a time or twenty that I do enjoy quick little projects that I can finish in a few hours. I went to the fabric store for some elastic, and happened upon a remnant of quilted fabric. It was just under a yard, and immediately I had some great ideas! So I did a little imagining and made myself this handy spotty tote bag!

Here is the view inside of the bag….

I did this one Sunday evening after dinner when all was quiet. I was so happy with it, I quick threw a cell phone picture of it up on Facebook……and had a very nice response. My Sister was taken with it and asked if I could make one for her. That is what you see in the first photo. The Black and White totes are Mother/Daughter totes. The large for her, the 1st small one for my niece Chloe, and the second for my soon to be home with her family niece, Cassia! Cassia is still in China living with her foster family. Hopefully she will be coming home to our family before the end of 2010. She just turned six…I think she will like her matching bag. All the girls will be very stylish while they tour China and spend that special getting to know you time with each other! Here is another photo of them all laid out…

Here is the inside of the Mom tote…

I like to add some loops to the inside for my key chains. I keep all those little store key tags on their own ring and then hook them to the loop. This way my real keys are not overloaded. So my totes have two pockets, two key loops, and the owners name stitched inside. I do also put a fabric covered piece of stiffener down in the bottom. I like that it helps it stand up if I need to set it down. I don’t use a pattern…just go by what feels right, and how much fabric I have. The quilted fabric can be pricey…but with a coupon it is not too bad. Makes a great gift, but probably not quite worth selling as there is no way to charge enough to make any kind of profit! Don’t know how Vera does it!!!

Lots going on…..

I’ve been busy doing lots of little things recently. I had a very disappointing result with the last step of the Duffy Dress. I was unable to attach the skirt to the bodice even with redoing the faux point on the front of the skirt. Ultimately the only solution is to redo the entire skirt. The combination of stiffener, velvet bias binding and layers of fabric proved just too much for all of the machines I tried to do the attaching. I ordered new stiffener, which is thinner.


It arrived on Friday!! Yea. So I opened it up today to check it out and start cutting and ironing it out flat.

I also will need to satin stitch each of the panels on the front of the skirt. This is very time consuming and eventually would add more to the overall cost of the dress. For now I am moving forward the plans as they have been in place. We’ve adjusted a few other aspects of the skirt….shorter panels! So…while waiting for the new stiffener I redid all of the embroidery. That went well. To keep me happy while the embroidery machine was busy…I put my serger to work making small summer dresses.

These two will be donated by Murphydresses to the Pillowcase Project which can be found on facebook. They will be sent to girls in Uganda, and there will be several hundred sent in each batch. Each dress made by a person just like me!
I also like to make a few summer outfits for my niece Chloe. It’s so much fun sewing for a little girls…and it goes so quickly. All told for her outfits and the donation dresses I spent maybe three days working on them while I was doing the embroidery. It is so satisfying to start and finish something this quickly! So here are Chloe’s new togs….

This is her Keep Bo away dress….her brother is none too fond of kitty’s!!!

This is the Latte with Mommy dress….it will be seen at the nearest Starbucks sometime soon!

Here is the Sunshine Outfit…guaranteed to make the rain disappear!

So my fun summer sewing time is over. I am very excited to complete the skirt with the new plans for Duffy. It’s coming along pretty well so far, I started the construction on the panels this afternoon. I do anticipate that it will take at least until the end of next week to finish the panels. We are going to Buffalo this weekend for Tara’s Dance Workshop. Full speed ahead when I get back!