Costume: The Queen of Hearts

The Queen of Hearts
Ready to Trip the Light Fantastic

Techniques: The Queen of Hearts already owned the ruched/shirred black bustier and tutu skirt. For the inset I cut a long rectangle of white costume satin and ran a gathering stick up both sides and two, closely spaced down the middle. Then I spent a lot of time trying to get the white satin ruching/shirring to mirror the black satin. Finally I had to just go for it. The red hearts are two sided. I pinned the white sating rectangle to mirror the sweat heart neckline of the bustier, then loosely hand stitched the white section on. After which, I hand stitched the hearts down. I expect to remove the entire inset in the future with a seam ripper, so I didn't go for a permanent meet up between the insert and original bodice.

Technique for the future: 

Those hearts didn't come out with crisp edges, eh? Well frankly in this case I kind of like the soft floaty,  imperfect, homemade look. These days, too many costumes roll off the assembly line for my taste. However, if I wanted to achieve a crispy look on this soft stuff another time, I think I would interface a similarly rounded and pointed edge form to one of the sides, then sew them up (all except for one straight shot on the right or left leg, then turn the joined sections right side out and stitch it up. In this case I didn't have to stitch the open edge up, because I was sewing the entire heart down to the white satin, so I just caught up the open edge then.

It's a Pressing Matter: Get Behind Me Goo!

It's not the Queen of Hearts
fault that I foreswore the
press cloth in my attempts to
make quick work of her
togs

I'm pretty sure I'm not the first sewist to trot out the old phrase It's a pressing matter, when it comes to ironing  So I surely do apologize if another sewing blogger or podcaster has used it as a major theme. The good stuff tends to stick in my craw, and I often think I've invited it myself. It really used to irk me is when somebody else used my good ones, (particularly at work!) and got all the credit. But it happens all the time. I've learned to accept it, and realize I probably do it myself.

I've been a little more focused on pressing because of my Fashion Sewing 110 class at Cañada College.  Rhonda and Kathleen made rather a point of remembering to use the press cloth to avoid sticky situations. That pretty much saved my iron a few weeks back when I mistakenly used 2-sided fusible instead of interfacing (I was in a bit of hurry and it looked the same to me). One of the sticky sides ended up on my press cloth and not the sole plate of my iron.

However I wasn't so lucky yesterday. In a hurry to get 3 just-turned-right-side-out red satin hearts for my daughter's Halloween "Queen of Hearts" bodice well shaped, I thought the iron, minus press cloth,  would help give them more definition. Well, it did. It also gave the iron a nice coat of sticky residue. Apparently the slickery coating on that cheap costume satin comes off mighty easily - in this case onto the sole plate of my iron.

Luckily, I remembered that Kathleen had mentioned she cleans the iron sole plates in class with that fine product "Goo Be Gone". I'm not the only person who doesn't always use the press cloth, it turns out. Luckily I own a bottle of Goo Be Gone Spray Gel. And, interesting to me - is it to anyone else? - I bought it at Menlo Hardware, a store that Kathleen (and her parents before her) owned herself for a long time.

My iron is shiny clean now. And the Queen of Hearts is ready to trip the light fantastic in a few weeks time.