I’m still spending the year revisiting old skills by reworking the collared, button-down shirt into a dress. Twenty-five years of making my own clothes, followed by years of weekly production of these collared, button-downs for Carillon Park definitely contributed to my overall skill growth. Back then, Carillon gave me a single shirt that I was expected to rip apart, resize, and build a new pattern from. And it needed to work for every person of all sizes!

Building on that old knowledge base, I set out to make a collared, button-down shirt into a cowgirl dress. I decided I wanted to adorn my cowgirl shirt dress with the glow-in-the-dark thread I bought many years ago. I also wanted to incorporate my newfound love of block printing. This was easier said than done. I resized the images on my iPad to fit onto the shirt yokes and transferred them with carbon paper. I used Kwik Sew pattern #454 from the 1970s for this dress. I knew I needed to make yoke templates, marking seam allowances to ensure my free-motion embroidery was in the correct placements.

The glow-in-the-dark thread was like plastic; it kept stripping and breaking during my hour-long practice session. I felt like a beginner again at this craft. Eventually, with no known explanation, it started to look better. Tip: When having problems, only change one thing at a time and make mental notes of what worked.

This garment took weeks to sew after months of time and planning. That is a lot of space in my brain.

The coolest part is when I wore it to a country music show in a dark venue,

I glowed!

Behind the scenes,

I won a second award from Blogspot this year. Earning an awesome place alongside some of my favorite icons. I made it into the top 100 sewing bloggers.

Thank you for reading.

Dream it! Sew it!

Tracy Mcelfresh

 

 

 

 

 

Tracy McElfresh
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