Flea market season kick off!

It's that time of year again, kids...flea market time.  Those magical Sundays when you set your alarm for 5:30, roll out of bed, slather on the sunscreen, chug your coffee and wander around vast fairgrounds full of treasure until you just can't wander anymore.

There was a shockingly small amount of rick-rack to be had. To be honest, I was a little disappointed.  Fortunately, for my friend Andrea, there were copious amounts of seashell art around, so her blog, Just for the Shell of It, is gonna get juicy.

Here are my findings:

Aprons --

Pretty classic rick-rack usage -- but I do love it as a way
to break up prints and solids.   

Embroidered rick-rack on gingham -- these are a few
of my favorite things (it's ok if you sang that line,
I totally did.)

   

And then....then, this happened....

 

Sadly, there wasn't a great way to get a good picture of this tragedy that calls itself a Christmas apron.  Held up or laying flat, it'll suck any Christmas cheer right out of the room.   It's a single line of rick-rack in a blobby christmas tree shape, adorned with three crappy bells.  Functional bells.  Out of proportion, cheap, functional, mismatched bells.  Oy.

And I'm sorry, the colors??  A warm red with an olive green? Ew. It needs way more than just an introduction to an iron to make it worthy to be worn while serving grandma's jello mold/salad.

Moving on.

Here's a super cute usage that I've never seen before:

It's kinda darling, right?  Just the tiniest bit of the edge is caught in the seam.  AND it's glittery.  It's a win, win!

I had a similarly quilted pillow when I was a kid -- but with eyelet lace around the edges.  I have a bit of a soft spot for this guy.

I would have loved to wrap up this post with an account of how I found the ones that got away -- but I didn't.  Rather, I found their smaller cousins in yellow.  Set of 4 for TWENTY DOLLARS!  I could not believe it.  I got all cranky last year about 6 for $18 -- maybe I should have pounced when I had the chance.  No worries, I'm not giving up the search.

Since they weren't meant to be, we'll end our tour of Elkhorn's season opener with a splendid use of rick-rack's long mocked cousin.

That's right, friends...I'm talkin' about ball fringe.  

I very much want to see a circus clown pushing her
clown baby around in this freaking fantastic pram.

Laura's yellow dress

It always makes me happy when a designer hands me rick rack.   We recently opened a lovely looking show set in 1938 (ish) for which we made many adorable garments.  This dress, in particular, was one of my favorites.   After many brain melting hours trying to figure out the pattern for the bodice (the sleeve and the front and back yokes are cut as one), I was rewarded with charming trimmings.

Rick racking process...

The collar pattern called for shaped pin tucks trimmed in rack rack.  To be honest, pin tucks on a curve are a pain, but worth it when they come out as darling as these did.  These were achieved by patterning the collar flat, tracing out the first inside tuck line, stitching it with a wide twin needle with the bobbin tension high, pulling the bobbin thread taut, pressing the tuck flat, laying the pattern back on, tracing out the next tuck line and the collar seam lines in between, lather, rinse and repeat.   

Finished bodice

The thing about rick rack -- in my humble opinion -- is that there's a right way and a wrong way to sew it on.  We usually default to a zig zag, and that's fine for theatrical things, but it's not pretty up close.  Neither is a straight stitch down the middle -- especially when the edges curl after a washing.  Don't get me wrong, I use both of those methods all the time as we're generally pressed for deadlines and on certain shows we've had an unbelievable amount to apply.  

If I've got the time and I want it pretty, I use a hand prick back stitch down the center of the tape that catches the top and bottom of the waves.  I prefer it because it's secure, invisible, and tacks the edges down -- but not in a way that it cements the trim to the garment.  This way, it floats gloriously on top.  Love it.  

Design by Kim O'Callaghan 

The great blog reboot of 2014

Guess what?

This blog is boring.  I've never had a real direction, which gives me zero motivation to post things.  Today, things change.  I'll be cleaning out the posts that have nothing to do with anything and turn my full focus to rick-rack.  That's really what we really care about, right? Right.    

Deliciously frosted in yards and yards of metallic
rick-racky goodness.

Ok, not JUST rick-rack -- just mostly rick-rack:

•  Fun applications and directions for such-- including, but not limited to, embroidery, insertion, bound buttonholes, etc.  
• Vintage garment examples/traditional usage/mass quantities
• New garments, probably mostly made by me and likely made for some costume for the theatre I work for
• Non garment usage
• Other awesomely tacky vintage trimmings
• Sewing-related silliness
• and more!

Stay tuned!