Charlie Brown is a Blockhead

I was asked to make a Charlie Brown dress for a little girl who loves Charlie Brown. Of course I said "yes"! She wants a simple sleeveless shift dress, just yellow with the stripe. What? No frills? Sounds easy!

I asked Libby if she wants a Charlie Brown dress too; how could she resist? It's her favorite color! Without hesitation she said, "No. I do not want a boy dress."

I found exactly the right color fabric. Awesome! Hobby Lobby didn't have any yellow or gold zippers, or anything remotely resembling these colors, luckily I have a large zipper collection at home. I bought extra fabric just in case I screw something up and  have to recut a piece, or if Libby decide she wants a Charlie Brown dress too, or if someone else asks for one after seeing it. Always good to have more than you need. I also picked up some black flannel for the stripe.

The yellow dress is easy enough, so I quickly whipped up two of them (leaving the sides open to add the stripe). I had two 7" zippers of just the right shade of yellow/gold, score! I made a pattern for the chevron stripe and cut out a few of those. I thought it would be best to applique the stripe to the dress. Before affixing the stripe, I wanted to finish the edges of the flannel with a 3-thread rolled hem.

This is when I decided that Charlie Brown is a blockhead. The chevron stripe was HARD to edge! I started at each peak and serged through the troughs to the next peak. It is impossible to pivot on a serger because of the knife; I have seen some tutorials and sewing shows where the sewist pivots at the peak of a corner, but I couldn't do it for the life of me. It looked awful, so I began and ended at each peak. Beginning to feed a peak into the feeddogs is tricky. The point wants to buckle and crumple. Not pretty. But, the peaks were a cinch compared to the troughs.

Serging in the trough is like performing a magic trick. I couldn't find much in the way of instructions online. I did find some tips to serge the inside of a corner, and a trough is just a super tight corner so that is the advice I followed. The trick to it is to straighten out the line, pinching the fabric up where the trough is. Then, serge right through it. It's not as easy as it sounds. Supposedly when  you straighten it out, it's just perfect, well, not always. Sometimes it looks like you chewed on it.  I figured out that it also helps a great deal to move the knife as far away from the edge as possible so that it doesn't cut quite as close. After three days of serging chevron stripe edges, I was feeling some angst with Charlie Brown's fashion choice.

Got it done though, the stripes looked good enough to use on the dress! I think they do anyway, or else my standards were drastically lowered in the attempt to finish the striping.

I applied the stripes to the dress front and back and then sewed the sides of the dress together. ARG! The stripes do not match up! Darn chevrons! I contemplated making a third dress. It really sounded like a great idea.

I cut more chevron stripes, this time I cut them twice as long so that it could wrap around and only have one joining seam rather than two. Why didn't I think of this before?  Back to edging the chevron.

The first trough I edged didn't go well, which means I have to cut another entire stripe from the flannel. At this point, I was running out of flannel, and I started to question my sanity. I made another decision that a third attempt was crazy and I will just fix the other dresses or learn to like them with the stripes not perfectly lined up.

My husband looked at them and said the stripes were ugly. His sound advice was, "you should put a rolled hem on the stripe". I did! The flannel is a little fuzzy though, and there are minute bits of fuzz on the edges, as any flannel will give you. But, I thought it looked pretty clean. He rethinks and advices that I should add them in like a star quilt, or hem the chevron stripe instead of putting a rolled edge on it, and make the dress more fitted instead of the A-line shape and gather the skirt under the stripe. He's full of grand ideas.

His ideas went nowhere fast. 

The dresses need that finishing touch, a ruffle at the hem. Charlie Brown wears black shorts so I added a black ruffle to give it the same underlined look. I also added sleeves to the spare dress and made a bias tape to finish the necklines and armholes of the sleeveless dress. Hey, they don't look too bad!

I had Libby try it on to check the size. Too long. Oh Lordy. I cut off the ruffle, trimmed the dresses up about and inch and a half, put the ruffles back on, and yes, they look much better. The stripe is lower now, but I like it there. 

I hope the person who ordered this dress will be happy with it. I am not charging her much since it is far from perfect and it was a good learning experience for me. I would have had to pay tuition to learn how to put a rolled edge on a chevron stripe. I think the dress will photograph well, and that's all that matters, right?

I cannot wait to get rid of this dress. But, that's not likely to happen. Libby loved it and claimed the spare as her own!  Good thing I made two!