How has a week gone by so fast? Children's week is already upon us, bringing three new challenges for our lovely contestants. This week they were tasked to create garments on a smaller scale, testing their precision and dexterity. This was definitely a fun and colourful episode to watch and all of us at Calico Laine loved it!
Cotton Jersey Hoodies
This was a great pattern challenge to do, using cute printed cotton jersey and stretchy ribbing, each contestant was to create a child's hoodie. If you are sewing along at home, this is a fairly easy pattern to follow and is a great introduction to working with stretch fabric. Here at
Calico Laine, we have a range of beautifully soft Cotton Jerseys ideal for this project. To make cutting out of this easier, some sewers chose to use a rotary cutter and mat as opposed to scissors to ensure their pattern doesn't distort. Each contestant produced a fun-coloured garment, but the judges (and mine!) favourite was definitely Janet's perfectly pattern-matched bunny print hoodie.
Pro Tip: When working with jersey, the key is to never pull or overstretch the fabric. This can pull your pattern pieces out of shape and leave you with a wonky garment! Use your pins and ease the fabric through gently, particularly around the hood edge and neckline.
Faux Fur Fancy Dress
The transformation challenge this week was to turn a faux fur coat into a mythical creature themed fancy dress costume. This is a great one to pull together from a charity shop find when you need a last-minute costume! Some easy ideas would be a fabulous Princess-Sunshine inspired cape or some adorable animal ear-and-tail combos similar to Leah's Supercat.
Made-To-Measure Dance Costumes
The final challenge was to create a child's dance costume fit for the stage! Each sewer tackled this in different ways; from sparkly 80s looks to ethereal leotard combos. Most sewers used stretch fabric, particularly lycra. Lycra is the perfect leotard fabric because of it's 4-way stretch properties, here at Calico Laine our line of Lycra fabric comes in a rainbow of vibrant colours and is made of the highest quality material. Overlaid with dress net or cationic chiffon, you can create your very own dance costume to rival Leah's Swan Lake-inspired garment of the week. Our favourite was definitely Jen's tartan creation, did you spot our very own tartan claim-to-fame?
Overlocking
Overlockers can be a little intimidating to use, as Ben found during the hoody challenge. However, they aren't as scary as you might think! Overlockers are a great tool across a variety fabrics; from finishing off seams neatly on the inside of your project through to sewing stretch fabric seams, it gives you a real professional edge. Overlockers loop 4 threads around the edge of your fabric whilst cutting a clean edge with a blade. This allows seams to stretch with the fabric instead of snapping threads and pulling against the garment. The contestants last night used overlockers both for the jersey hoody challenge and in their dance made-to-measure challenge to create their garments.
Are you sewing along at home? Send us photos of your creations to the Calico Laine Facebook page!
