Holiday Lights by Bobbi Bullard Embroidery Journal August 15, 2004 The popular saying during the holidays is "'Tis the season to be jolly." I like to think of it as the season to be beautiful. The holidays are the one time of year I indulge in my love of glamour and don fancy dress, and sparkly things even for my casual wear. What an opportunity to indulge my creative side as well. By sewing my own holiday wear, I can make unique, beautiful clothing that's also flattering. Now, with the wonderful marriage of machine embroidery and heat applied crystals, the clothing I construct can even sparkle.
Despite my attraction to holiday clothes, I think it's important to keep my time investment in creating them to a minimum. Each piece is worn a limited number of times during a limited season. Yet, I still want my holiday wear to be elegant and beautiful; clothing to wear as I dress up and pretend to live the elegant life.
Meeting the Challenges Over the years I've found ways to create wonderful, flattering clothing with a minimum time investment. The following strategies enable me to have a luscious wardrobe in a minimum amount of time.
The Pattern One of the easiest ways to reduce the time it takes to create a holiday garment is to choose a pattern with limited detail but stylish lines. Don't confuse simple with no shape. Look for patterns with a limited number of pieces then check each piece. If each piece is rectangular, the finished garment won't have a pleasing shape unless you use very soft fabrics. Most soft fabrics are harder and more time consuming to work with than fabrics with a stiffer hand so for holiday sewing I shy away from the patterns with rectangular pieces. I also suggest choosing patterns that don't require lining. For limited use clothing lining seems to be an unnecessary complication. Some examples of clothing with elegant lines but easy construction are the Athena Blouse by LaFred, the Lotus Skirt from Sewing Workshop, the Torii Top from Revisions and the one I've used in the samples shown, Cutting Lines' By Popular Demand.
	Another time reducer is to use the same pattern multiple times. One crucial step in any sewing project is fit. Though fitting a pattern with simple lines takes less time than sewing with a more complex pattern, it still takes I time. If you can use the same pattern several times you only go through the fitting process once. For the top shown, I added front darts. Even a good pattern will look better fitted. Changing fabric and embroidery allows you to produce very different looks with the same pattern.
Fabric To keep sewing time to a minimum choose fabrics that are easy to sew. As appealing as the chiffons, georgettes and charmeuses are, walk by them in the fabric store (or, if you're like me, bypass that section of your fabric stash.) These fabrics are difficult to sew and will take more time. Some fabrics that produce festive results but are easy to sew are silk dupionis, broadcloths or shantungs. Though we think of linen as a summer fabric it can be used any time of year for blouses or tops. Wool is another easy-to-sew choice.
Stabilizers I feel strongly about stabilizers and the affect they have on finished clothing, inside and out. Although I can't say the back of embroidery is beautiful, stabilizer is even less attractive, so I choose stabilizers that can be removed from the project after sewing. Another issue is the stiffness of some stabilizers. To satisfy my aesthetic sensibility and to keep my projects supple, I choose water-soluble stabilizer whenever possible. Both the silk and linen tops shown are made with this stabilizer option. For fabrics that can't be washed, No show or poly-mesh stabilizer offers stability with no added stiffness. I usually line pieces I make with this type of stabilizer because it remains in the finished project. Because no lining is one of my self-imposed rules for my holiday sewing, so I either choose a different fabric/stabilizer combination or put up with the unpleasant look of the stabilizer remaining in the garment. Another possibility for fabrics requiring dry-cleaning is a stabilizer that is eliminated when ironed, called a heat-away. The heat-away works well as a stabilizer but is sometimes hard to find and can be expensive.
Embroidery Designs For me, stitching the embroidery designs is the most time consuming part of my holiday projects. To minimize the time requirement, I choose a one-color design and repeat it multiple times. This year, I've embraced using heat-applied crystals on my creations so I use designs created specifically for crystals. You can use these crystals with almost any embroidery design but if you choose one of the designs created specifically for the crystals, then placement circles are stitched out, which ensures consistent placement. You can find a variety of sets to host your crystals.
Design Placement For fastest results place your designs randomly. The gold silk has a small motif scattered over the sleeves. To increase the casual feeling I arbitrarily rotated the designs. Another way to minimize stitching time is to limit the portion of the garment that is embroidered. Choosing a small part of the total garment is an effective way to highlight the embroidery. Embroider over the collar, cuffs, or pockets. Sprinkle designs across the shoulders or on one side of the front.
The white top has the designs placed regularly down each front and back. This kind of structure is effective but takes a great deal more time and care. This can be done with any embroidery machine with any size hoop but it's much easier with a large hoop. I embroidered the right front with my 4-inch by 4-inch hoop and multiple hoops before it occurred to me that my Designer I Megahoop would not only save me time, but make the task of consistent placement much easier. Once I realized this, the left front took less than half the time than the right.
Crystals My first experience with embellishing with crystals included sew on beads. As I spent hours hand sewing each individual bead, I knew there must be a better way. There is, heat set Austrian crystals. Each crystal has a heat-activated glue on the back to position the crystal. The crystal has the beauty and permanence of a sewn crystal bead but takes a fraction of the time to apply. I found the crystals so appealing that I use them all the time, holiday or otherwise.
Holiday Dressing If you choose the right fabric, pattern and embroidery designs, then you too can create beautiful works of art to wear with minimum time investment and maximum enjoyment.
Bobbi Bullard explores options for enhancing sophisticated garments with sewing machine embroidery. Bobbi's work, patterns for sale and embroidery designs, along with Crystal sets Crystal Treasures, Botanical Jewels, Crown Jewels, and Delicate Garden, heat-set Australian crystals, the L'Orna applicator from Kandi Corp, and Free Designs by Bullard Designs, are available at www.bullarddesigns.com. (Both samples shown above use designs from the Crown Jewels set.)