Let’s Design Ice Girl’s Next Figure Skating Dress

I saw this pattern advertised and love the use of appliques. How are the directions for applying the appliques. Do you have to use a fusible webbing when applying? Look E6000 glue and I are friends. I love love love to serge and the thought of stitching that down to lycra just makes me nervous!! let us know how you did and how many time your swore at the project!! Love Salmon on the ice, brilliant color! I like a hologram white flowers with green stems with Salmon.

It’s hard to judge the colors on my monitor, but I think I’d avoid pink with the salmon. The one I really like is #43, the tie-dye-5478. You could cut around the pattern in various sizes with the option of keeping multiple “circles” together. But cutting out that pattern could get tedious. The multi-harleqin-4318 would lend itself to the cascading rectangles (or more like diamonds).

Have you ever imported pictures into paint to play with the patterns? It’s something I’ve done before to get a feel for what the finished garment will look like.

I agree with you that it’s pretty cool what they did with the appliques at the bottom of the chartreuse/fuchsia dress.

Good luck and I’d love to see the finished project.

It is difficult with out being able to put the fabrics close together to see how the pinks/reds/oranges look next to the salmon. Although, with enough stones I don’t know how much it will matter. Top three choices would be:#42 rainbow-brush-strokes-6452 – you could cut out the swirly parts with just the tiniest bit of a black outline to make them stand out, have them in a cascading effect coming down the dress with more near the skirt, making it look like they are starting to drip off the skirt. Difficult to tell about the colors looking good, but it would be a killer look if the dress were going to be black velvet. #6 mango-multi-ribbon-3952 – again cutting along the ribbon shape, you could maybe do some sort of overlapping where it looks like the swirly ribbons are moving around each other. You could do this with the other ribbon patterns, but I liked the colors on this one the best.#43 tie-dye-5478 – as was mentioned by Lynne, the circle shapes could be cut to various sizes. Also, I like the color options on this fabric. Once these are cut down to individual circle shapes they will probably look more like abstract flowers than tie-dye and this could be quite lovely. Especially with the blue/purple colors on the salmon.I too want to hear how the adventures of applique go – I did some on a dress, but they really looked sort of sloppy until I put the rhinestones on. I just pinned and sewed though, no fusing mesh or anything.Best of luck, I am sure it will look great!

*Edit: After thinking about it again, I also think the multi-harlequin-4318 cascading diamonds would look cool, but I think I would only like the black, dark blue, light blue colors on the salmon fabric. So while I think it would look pretty awesome, I don’t know if you would want to buy so much fabric just to get three colors… Also depends on the music – the tie-dye flower or brush stroke look would probably be better for a soft pretty piece of music, with the bright ribbon or bold diamonds maybe being better for an upbeat/jazzy sort of routine. Just random thoughts as I get distracted imagining all the costumes…

I love love love that pattern, I ordered it too! I like the flowers on royal blue #6607. I would cut out the flowers and applique them on. When I do a dress with appliques I use light weight heat-n-bond to attach them (low heat and a press cloth are extremely nessesary!) It works really well and the heat-n-bond seems to have a little stretch so i’ve never had a problem with it affecting the stretch of the fabric. I can’t wait to get started on mine, i will send you a picture when it’s finished
Becky
P.S. We should have a skate dress sew along,that would be sew fun LOL!

OK first, love the site. . .I just graduated from being my girls 1st FSC Pres and I refer to your stuff all the time! I personally don’t love the idea of the prints. . .unless it isn’t so very bold because you are making a pattern with your appliques. I also think it would be good to use complimentary colors like teal or blue. I checked Spandex World and here are a few item numbers for you to look at. . .I think any of these doubled up with either White or Black lycra as a background (or alternating) would be fantastic. . 5864, 4268, 6925, 6352, 4560. Also, not sure if you have this tip already but I have done a few overlays and appliques on lycra and the best way to get them where you want is to spray the back of the applique with Elmer’s Craft Bond Spray Adhesive and then sew around the applique. The nice thing about this glue is it is temporary and permanent bond so you can reposition a few times if you don’t have everything in the exact right place. I usually use a few pins around the applique as well, just to be extra sure. Good luck, would love to see a pic of the dress when it is done!

Dear Ice Mom,

Is that the same color you showed me at the rink? This one actually looks more salmon, I like it!

Everyone else- I’m impressed. Good ideas. So far no one is taking this opportunity to torture Ice Girl with crazy dress ideas.

Hey Newyorkland,

Love you idea of the white hologram flowers, LOVE IT.

Hey. Nope. The salmon’s different from the one I showed you at the rink. This one is more orange than pink.

Hi, Angela! I’m so glad you love the site!

I would think that the craft bond spray adhesive would gum up the needle. It doesn’t?

I use Heat ‘n’ Bond lite to affix appliqués, but I think I might try the spray…just to try it.

I like the idea of using black as a background to show off the appliqués, too. But do you think I could just use a black satin stitch to make the appliqués pop?

I like this one better

No gumming. . .the stuff is amazing, try it out, just a light spray will do. I never tried putting heat on Spandex, it isn’t recommended since you have the possibility of it melting. I supposed you could do that with the satin stitch, but my feeling on that is that it is way more work. If you were to put down background fabric, you would just position the one in front of the other stitch together and then place them on the costume and stitch, regular straight stitch for both. . .way faster!

Ummm…will you be my Mom and make me a dress too? I am in awe of you. My sewing skills extend to sewing ribbons and elastic on my pointe shoes and that’s it. And…since icecoach said no one is giving crazy ideas, I will say that you should use all of the fabrics above and put them all over the dress. I couldn’t resist the opportunity to be crazy. As for a sincere answer, I think i’d have to see the fabric in person to really tell. Things look one way online and a different way in real life.

Ditto what she said will pay good money for this lol (new enterprise? lol)

Matti

I have been sewing since I was a wee child – now I’m an old crone-y, LOL. But I’ve never made a dress for dd and just purchased my first pattern to make one. I don’t have a serger so I’m going to be using my regular sewing machine. I’m so scared of not doing things right but I have to delve into it and try. I see you are getting things from Spandex world. I’ve seen their stuff but I want more velvety stretches and didn’t see much there.

I like the hibiscus flowers but they might be too big. I prefer smaller scaled things. You could also add in a few flourishes by doing them on tissue paper first and then transfering to material. If you did the flourishes I would put them in the fuschia hologram. The flowers could be in the pink flowers on black. But going with my scheme would mean that you’d have to change the salmon because they would clash rather than complement each other. Hmmm, maybe it’s not such a great idea that I gave you. Any great tips for a beginner?

I like Becky’s idea of a pattern sew along!! Kinda like a book club only different. lol It is always fun to see what people do with the same pattern. My ice girl is good with her costumes right now but I need a new project. I think she could skate for two weeks straight and not wear the same dress twice. It is just fun to sew.