Happy May Day with TV dress

Sometimes ideas just hit me when I come across unusual materials. A while ago a soft plastic storage unit that was hanging in our cleaning closet and storing our wrapping paper broke down. As I was transferring all the stuff to a new one I looked at the plastic pockets of the of the old one and realised that the see-trough plastic material could be reusable. What if I could sew a dress that had a pocket with changing images according to the moods and needs of the person wearing the dress?

I started sketching and came up with an idea of a TV screen. I searched trough Pinterest for inspiration and copied an image of a TV which I modified slightly. I transferred the image on to a thin white sweatshirt material after interfacing it and drew the image using a black thread and a straight stitch. Then I cut off the screen of the TV and stitched the plastic to the pocket.

The Gissa Vem jersey dress from Ottobre design 1/2016 was a good pattern to start with. I straightened the hem and cut the front piece from armhole to armhole. Then I appliquéd (is that a word? sewed an appliqué?) the TV background noise (that I drew with fabric markers) to the front of the lower part and applied the TV image on to the top. I put an invisible zipper to the top of the TV image and hid it in the horizontal seam.

Sewing the dress was quite straightforward after the appliqué pocket. I added an hand-embroidery “Mun oma ohjelma” that means “My own program” to the hem of the dress. Then to make “programs”, I and S drew pictures and laminated them to make them last.

Here is the pocket open and no program cards inside:

Here is another program. “Nälkä” means “hungry” in Finnish. It was nearing a lunch time and apparently modelling makes you hungry!

There lots of other cards and here are just a few examples:

The dress has made quite an impact in the preschool. S loves to change the cards during the day to surprise her friends and teachers. The only problem is that I do not dare to put the dress into the washing machine. That means I have to hand wash it and that’s a real bother.

Tomorrow is May Day and we have started celebrating in Finnish fashion already on the May Day’s eve. That means balloons, streamers and home-baked donuts. We promised the kids helium foil balloons but they decided to spend the money wiser and buy themselves archery equipment. Our downstairs hallway is now an archery range and I must learn to dodge arrows!