When I say, “It’s sew manly to sew for the women in your life,” I don’t mean exclusively at home in the comfort of your sewing workshop. If you enjoy RV Camping as much as I do, why not take your sewing workshop on the road?
My wife and I were planning a week-long October vacation at Drummer Boy Camping Resort at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. When I learned that my youngest granddaughter’s school would be closed on the Friday of our scheduled week, I called to ask if she would like to spend a long weekend in our 26’ Wilderness RV travel trailer. She said she would love to and it wasn’t long before she popped the question,

"Grandpa, Would You Make Me a Faerie Dress for Halloween?"

Yes, she did say, "Please." Pixie, as I affectionately call her, loves anything to do with the Faerie Realm. So it was only natural that she would want a faerie dress to wear for Halloween. And, it was only natural that her Sew Manly Grandpa, yours truly, would agree to make one for her.

It wasn’t until I got off the phone that the logistical problems associated with fashion sewing at a campground really sank in. 

Gearing Up for Sewing in the Woods

I faced several challenges:
•    Too little time; perhaps four or five hours after shopping
•    No pattern for a faerie dress
•    No time to shop for fabric and notions
•    No room inside the trailer for my 80”x30” sewing table

The obvious first step was to select a suitable fabric from my stash. My fabric choice would influence my notions requirements and my construction options. And so it was that I entered the scary realm of my sewing stash, most of which is contained in two dozen under-the-bed-style plastic storage boxes.

In the Faerie Realm, beautiful woodland faeries are often depicted wearing gauzy gowns. As Halloween nights are usually chilly in our neck of the woods, a black leotard and tights under a gauzy dress would make a reasonably warm and appropriate costume for a young woman of 12.  After digging through several boxes, I found just the thing - several yards of a fabric designed for the making of peasant-style skirts. It had a printed pattern of pastel decorative blocks, some of which were puckered or crinkled to create a dimensional appearance. The most important design feature for my purpose was the pre-finished white selvage edge, which I could use as the hem of the dress.

Define - Selvage, Warp & Weft: Woven fabric is constructed on a loom. Length-wise “warp” threads are fed through the loom, while cross-wise “weft” threads are woven from side to side, over and under alternating warp threads. Where the weft threads wrap around the outer-most warp, to begin their return trip across the cloth, an extra tight edge is woven to protect the cloth from raveling and add stability.

The selvage is seldom suitable for use as a finished garment edge, but some fabrics are woven with a selvage that is specifically designed for use as a pre-finished hem. Such was the case with the fabric I selected for Pixie’s faerie dress.
 
[An easy way to remember which threads are warp and which are weft is to imagine Elmer Fudd saying to Buggs Bunny, “Weft thweds go weft to whight, you quazzy wabbit.”]

The Plan

I realized that I could easily create a wrap skirt from this material. I wouldn’t need a pattern to do that. If I were to make a top that was like a short skirt, gathered at the top edge with elastic, I wouldn’t need a pattern for that, either. By tucking the top inside the wrap skirt, the ensemble would resemble a dress.

No pattern required. No zipper needed. No darts to stitch and press. No hem to finish. Bingo! A 4-hour faerie dress was beginning to look like a plan.

Define – Dress: A dress is made by stitching a top to a skirt at the garment’s waist line. If a garment looks like a dress, but is made using full-length vertical panels, which extend from the neckline to the hem, it is generally called a shift or shift dress. My project would be a dress if I joined the top to the skirt, but it is actually a two-piece ensemble that looks like a belted dress, due to the matching fabric and finished waist band on the skirt.

The Campsite Sewing Workshop

Next I needed a strategy for setting up a remote campsite sewing workshop. It had to be set up outside of our 26’ RV Trailer, because there was not enough room inside. It had to fit under the awning, in case of rain. It had to be equipped with the essential power tools, materials, and supplies to complete the project. It had to have a suitable support for my sewing worktable top, which is an 80”x30” hollow-core door, on which I placed a layer of cotton quilt batting, and over which I stretched a covering of cotton muslin. The muslin is stapled to the underside of the door. The 100% cotton padded door makes an ideal surface for pinning patterns to fabric, cutting pattern pieces from the fabric, ironing fabric, and pressing design features into fabric.

Define - Muslin: Muslin is very inexpensive woven cotton fabric, which is normally used for making test garments.

Finding a proper support for my sewing table top was easy; the ubiquitous campsite picnic table was just the right size. I could move it under the awning next to the external power outlet.

My Ford F250 Super Duty Diesel Pickup may have plenty of hauling capacity, but I couldn’t take the entire contents of my sewing workshop on the road, so I had to select only those power tools, implements, supplies, and materials that were essential to completing the project. On the other hand, I had to be prepared for contingencies, because I would have no time to go shopping for forgotten notions. 

The picture above shows the entire campsite sewing workshop and the picture to the right is a key to the basic components, which I will explain in detail in Part 2.

A – Kenmore Elite sewing machine.
B – Peasant skirt fabric.
C – Seam roll, on which to press seams.
D – Tailor’s ham, on which to press darts.
E – June Tailor Point Presser & Clapper.
F – Rowenta DG980 Expert Steam Generator Iron.
G – Sewing work table top.
H – Sweater storage boxes.
 I – Thread spool storage box.
 J – Shoe storage boxes.

This list doesn’t include all of the notions that I brought, such as fusible interfacing, lingerie elastic, pellon WaistShaper interfacing, buttons, and hook & eye sets. I'll have much more to say about my power tools, hand tools, implements, materials, and supplies when I show you how to make a dress like Pixie’s faerie dress in Part 2.

No Sewing Pattern

To be honest, I just didn’t have time to deal with a pattern. For one thing, patterns seldom fit properly without first being modified! You see, dress patterns are drafted for best fit based on the assumed measurements of an “ideal” female body shape. The ideal measurements are actually derived by aggregating measurements taken from many women in each of the size ranges. Few women have those exact measurements.

Fred’s Sewing Tip #1: If you slip up and tell to your wife that the reason her pattern needs adjustments is because it’s drafted to fit the “ideal” body shape, Pal, you will be in deep remnants! So, listen up! Here’s how you may be able to recover. Without flinching, simply turn to her and say, in your most sincere tone of voice, “Sweetheart, the only pattern that matters is the pattern in my mind for the ideal woman in my life and you are the only perfect fit.”
You owe me, Pal.

What’s Coming in Part 2

With only four hours in which to make Pixie’s faerie dress, I didn’t have an opportunity to take progress photographs. Now that I am back in my sewing workshop, I am photographing the basic sewing techniques used in this project. In Part 2, I’ll show you the photos and explain the process for completing the dress. Subscribe to my blog if you want to be notified when Part 2 is posted.