Lots of Costume Fabric

We have all been waiting as patiently as possible for our fabric to come in for the Duffy School costumes. I was so happy when my doorbell rang and it finally arrived.

This is how the fabric comes to me. I travel down to the NYC Garment district with my color swatches from the customer and then select the fabric we are looking for. This time the order was a high yardage for the orange satin which was not a huge seller this year. The store had to order more from the mill….wherever that may have been. We had to wait an extra 4-6 weeks. The great thing is that we know that in the future we will always be able to get this particular color and fabric again!

I had already received the velvets several weeks earlier and had gotten them cut and prepped. I am keeping them stored in some bins until I send the bodice pieces off to Ann D. for embroidery.

The blue turquoise is prepped with 100% cotton fusible interfacing. These particular pieces are for two sets of sleeves. The turquoise for the skirt is interfaced with the same cotton but in black. The bins keep the fabric away from curious visitors! The embroidery for these costumes will go on the orange fabric which is then layered over either the black or turquoise velvet depending on whether is for the bodice or skirt. I think you can see some of the black in the bin that Lyra is sitting on.

The first batch of dresses will be a group of four. The second is a group of five. I’ll keep posting as the work progresses!

Big Changes

New dance school! Growing up brings lots of changes. There have been some pretty big ones with both of my kids recently. For Tara Middle School has been a constant challenge with her classes. Certain aspects are wonderful, and others a struggle. She has a very long list of things that she is great at and really enjoys doing…dance being way up at the top! Her decision this year to really explore some new forms of dance has opened her horizons to things she’s never tried before. She is also exploring some new mediums for Art and her photography skills have really taken off. We welcome all of these exciting new developments…but it can sometimes mean that change has to happen. In order to put some more focus on the difficult areas of school we felt it necessary to make a change in Irish Dance schools. Thats a pretty big deal for her, and she was not too thrilled with Mom and Dad forcing this change. But as you grow up sometimes things do have to be sacrificed….and we could no longer continue the weekly drive to her class. We did have a great carpool, but getting home very late on a school night had to stop.

So she recently started at a new school, Clann Na Cara right here in town. It’s a pretty new school to our area and she is really happy that many of her friends that she had started dancing with back when they were six are dancing here. One of the first things she did was attend this Masterclass by one of the dance captains from Riverdance! The show was in town this week which made this possible.
She enjoyed the class. They did both hardshoe and softshoe and Tara was really impressed with Maeve’s dancing and teaching skills.

More on the changes happening with my guy Trevor soon. We are still in the middle of working out some things for him, and when it is all in place I will have lots to share.

I had lovely Maggie stop by to model her dress! She looks great. There were a few final adjustments done, and they were just the needed thing. After having a chance to dance a bit in the dress we could see that some things needed to be done. Once taken care of….voila! She looks awesome. I hope she dances up a storm!

I did take a few pics before it was picked up….and Tara had her hand with a few photos as well. These are the ones that she took….

You can see how she and I just see things differently! It’s usually handy to have her around!

Duffy School Update….We had a fabric snafu! The store had to reorder some of our key fabric. It felt like it took forever for it to come in. It finally came in on Friday and they should have it sent up to me by Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. It’s the orange of course because all of our embroidery is on that fabric! I am hoping that I can still get the first four of the dresses done for them by the end of May. It will be tight, if I can do it…but I am going to give it every possible minute I can. It’s tough when there are delays that you can’t control….but sometimes they happen.

Hope everyone had a Happy Easter!

Catching up on pictures

This is what it looks like when your camera is broken. For a while my camera would sometimes take photos that look like the one above. Usually I could turn it off and then turn it back on and it would be ok. That is no longer the case. Now that is its’ permanent state. So sad. I am worried about losing all of the pictures that I still have on there. Hopefully I won’t. So I am going to catch up on posting the photos I took a while ago, and hope that the ones that are still there won’t be lost.

Here the sleeves were sewn on. Since this photo was taken, I redid the left sleeve so it would lay smoother at the shoulder seam. It came out very nice. Now they both have nice smooth shoulders!

These are the patches to attach the cape. The family wanted no embroidery on the back of the bodice….this dress is so small I don’t think any could have fit! So these patches work well for two reasons…add some embroidery and secure the cape!

Here’s the cape! Such beautiful eyelet!!! I love it. I tried lining it with both the pink satin and the salmon velvet…..but both were too much. Then I self lined it and it was perfect!! The patches add just the right amount of detail, with some crystals it is awesome.

A nice look at the crown. Just enough sparkle there.

This is the front panel of the skirt. This is showing it all the way up to the natural waist, but the skirt has a very dropped waist. What will be visible of this is really only a few inches. The main part of the skirt has long full ruffles of the eyelet, organza and satin.

Thats the satin part.

Thats the organza part. That also is the end of the pictures that I was able to retrieve for now. I have lots more that hopefully I will be able to add in a few days.

I’ve also been working steadily on the dresses for the Duffy School. I have some fun pics of lots of fabric prep…..there is nothing like interfacing a gazillion yards of velvet fabric! I’ll post those too when I can get them.

A little something funny…..

We all love our pets…..but what is it that our pets love?

This is Cassini with her pop tarts!

She loves her pop tarts!

Yes she did finally get inside the package, after dragging the box out of the pantry and then, getting them out of the box. Don’t mess with her pop tarts!

Favorite flavor???? Strawberry….unfrosted!

Completing the Embroidery and School Dress update.

I am working on finishing all of the embroidery.

These will turn into the patches that will attach the cape to the back of the dress. I will layer some stiffener and add an underside, then satin stitch the whole thing to turn it into a single piece. I’ll sew the top of the cape to one, add some velcro and it will look so pretty!

This is one of the sleeve embroidery pieces stitching out on the embroidery machine.

While making this dress I am also continuing work on a school dress order. We thought we had all of the fabric squared away and ready to order. One of the colors turned out to be not quite right, so we are selecting something different for that. It is one of the main fabrics so it is important to get it just right. Plus we want to do the best we can to make sure that this same fabric will be available in the future so all of the school dresses will be consistent. Many of the other items to make the dresses are starting to come in….I’m wishing I had another closet in my sewing room! I may take over some space in my son’s closet next. I keep seeing these dresses in my dreams…it’s so funny how that happens. But very soon the construction of these will start, and I look forward to documenting that journey.

Sleeves

Moving right along on this cute little salmon dress. I have all of the bodice pieces nearly finished and ready to assemble! I worked this afternoon and evening on transferring the cutting and sewing lines on those, and all that is left is to serge them before finishing. Always hesitate before deciding whether to line the front of the bodice as one whole piece (center and sides of princess seams) or do each little one by itself. I always wind up doing it the same…but for some reason it never wants to stick and I always take a breath here!

I also spent a good deal of time on the sleeves. Copied the pattern, and played with the embroidery design options. Here are some photos….

This is the one I finally decided to do:

Here’s the reasoning….We decided that the sleeves would not be fully embroidered from top to bottom. That might be a bit overwhelming for this little girl. So I played around with variations of the bodice. I wanted the embroidery to cover more distance length wise than height wise, so I kept the original size of the long “arms” and shrunk the size just a bit of the center piece. I rotated the “arms” so that all three elements would fit in one hooping of my largest hoop. That will save time, and fits within the budget allowance for this dress. I choose the pointy scroll (for lack of a more specific word) element rather than the triskele because I thought it gave a nice vertical line for the sleeve. Will help her arms look nice and straight.

So far things are coming along nicely. I’ve got the bodice totally mapped out. It’s funny when I am working on the bodice I always think that’s the most difficult part. Then when I move to the skirt….you got it….I always think that’s the most difficult part! So either all of the difficulty is behind me….or still to come!

Full bodice test

Just finished up the full bodice test. Happily it went very well. I love the thickness of the design, and it stitches out very smoothly. It’s going to be great.

The first one is with the flash, second one without. The color is very fun, and the glitter is perfect for a bit of sparkle without being over the top. My sewing room looks like a christmas tree!

Eileen Ivers Concert

The whole family went to an Eileen Ivers concert last night. Tara danced with some of the girls from her school. Now that Trevor is playing violin, I thought he would really be able to appreciate seeing someone who plays at such a World Class level. The show was beyond wonderful. Eileen’s playing really defies description, and she seems so gracious and heartwarming on the stage. I may have mentioned a few times before how lucky I feel we are to attend concerts at The Homer Center for the Arts. This is where Tara takes her Irish Dance lessons. It is such a lovely venue, small and intimate. Yet the talent that performs there is astounding.

This is after the concert. Eileen signed autographs for the girls and let us take a few pictures. She was indeed incredibly gracious and could not be kinder. I had had the chance several times in the past to arrange for dancers to perform at some of her concerts and even her staff members are as kind. The kids had a great time dancing in their home venue….I heard they pretty much felt like rock stars! They did a nice job, and were appropriately in awe of the whole band.

Sadly, Trevor did not make it through the whole concert. He had said before we headed out that he was starting to not feel well. Sure enough by the time the first half was over he’d had the chills and the start of a good fever. Ron and he left early and Tara and I were generously given a ride home by our dear friends. It was a late night so that was especially nice of them to go out of their way. Trevor did get to see lots of great playing, and when asked about it he said “it was good, I liked it.” I suppose that is high praise indeed from a sick ten year old. He was a bit sad not to see her play her blue fiddle, but as it turned out she never did use it. I was delighted to see her use the electric Mandolin! Now that was a first for me.

The whole night was a lot of fun. Glad that the whole family could be together for at least part of it!

Doing some testing

Here is one of Ann Donahue’s fantastic designs. At least part of one! I am doing some test stitch outs. Just wanted to show how I handle that. I prepared this glitter velvet by using a 100% cotton iron on interfacing. Then I hooped some sticky back stabilizer and laid the velvet onto that. Under the hoop I used some medium wt. tear away, and on top of the fabric I laid some water soluble stabilizer. All this to keep the thread from sinking into the velvet. That was what was present for the right side of the design.

I’ve used the glitter velvet before, so suspected I would need yet one more layer to make this stitch out work. That did prove to be the case! The right side of the design was subject to shredding thread, thin coverage, and lines not quite lining up. For the second side, I added the miracle layer…Waxed Paper! Thus I achieved the beautiful result of the left side. I was able to lay the waxed paper right on top of the fabric, it came up leaving no little bits to pick off. Just lovely!

Now of course my lame picture does not show all of this in such great detail, so I’ll try to take a better one and add it to the post shortly.

Here is a better one….

Senior Solo Skirt

All Finished!

I took this last photo on the day that I mailed it off. The white background helps show the black organza very well. It also really highlights how the back of the skirt is longer than the front as the customer requested. The gold plisse has a lovely gradual lengthening as it wraps around to the back, and the black is very swirly and floaty. It should move beautifully when she dances!