At one of the pre-season games at Brown's stadium this year, I noticed several little girls wearing the cutest cheerleader dresses, and I decided right then I had to make one for myself. The fabric store didn't have jersey fabric in the right colors for the Cleveland Browns, so I had to use T-shirts. When I started, I wasn't sure of the logo I wanted for the front, but was considering using a Brown's helmet I had saved from an old shirt of my husbands.
After un-seaming the shirts (dark brown, orange and white), I needed to work out how to cut them down to size and give them a shape. I experimented with a white shirt, and settled on some princess seaming with inverted pleats around the waist. Once I had worked out the plan with the white shirt, I executed it on a brown shirt.
The length of the shirt was too short for a dress, so I sewed together strips of orange and white to make a border and increase the length.
Now that I had the dress basically constructed, I started work on the logo. I decided that the reason the Browns have been having such a hard time of it is because they abandoned the Brownie, and I thought that bringing back Brownie would bring them luck. I made the logo out of appliques.
The appliques applied to the bodice, before I added embroidery detail:
After embroidering the logo, I finished and detailed the neckline and armholes. This is the dress nearly finished, but before I applied ric-rack to the hem (which is shown in the picture at top). I'm pleased with the ric-rack, I think it adds an extra "brownie" touch. :-)
A close-up of the final logo and neck detail.
The dress was finished and worn for the first time last Sunday...the Brown's first win of the season! Coincidence? I think not! :-)
