What I Made This Week: School Spirit Wear, Friday Night Sequins and 45 Wedding Dress Keepsakes
The pennant flags got me this week. Little brown gingham flags, cut and appliquéd onto crewnecks, seventeen of them in a stack on my table. I kept picking one up to look at it before I moved on to the next. Gingham is fiddly. You have to line the check up or your eye catches it straight away.
That was the week. Spirit wear season arrived all at once, and my machine barely stopped.
Between the 10th and the 18th I made 205 pieces across 132 orders and 52 different designs. That is the biggest week I have had in a long time, and more than half of it was school.
School spirit wear took over the table
The Delran Bears fall fundraiser came in, and it came in big. 107 pieces went out this week for four schools — the high school, the middle school, the intermediate school and Millbridge Elementary. Twelve different designs.
The breakdown, because people always ask me what sells:
- 35 Bears script appliqué crewnecks — far and away the favourite
- 17 pennant flag crewnecks in the woodland brown gingham
- 14 varsity B tees across the two designs
- 13 vintage stripe tees, a few of them youth sizes
- 8 teacher fleece jackets, full zip and quarter zip
- 7 sunglasses bear tees
- 4 performance tees, 3 full-zip hoodies, 3 polos
- 3 embroidered trucker hats
A fundraiser order is a different kind of sewing than a keepsake. There is no story in each one. But there is a rhythm to it — you thread once, you hoop forty times, and somewhere around the thirtieth crewneck you stop thinking and your hands just go. I like that part.
Friday night, in sequins
I also finished the Pitman football sequin sweatshirt this week, and I put it on Instagram because I could not stop looking at it. Orange sequin laid over velvet, with “football” embroidered underneath in a soft little script. Under the stadium lights the sequins do something you cannot photograph properly. Here it is on video if you want to see it move.
If you want one for your own team, I can do it in your colours — that design lives in sports sweatshirts along with the rest of my embroidery.
Wedding dresses, still the biggest thing I do
Even in a school week, the dresses do not slow down. 45 wedding pieces went out:
- 20 BRIDE keepsake sweatshirts, each one with a bride’s new last name
- 12 flower bouquet appliqué sweatshirts made from gown fabric
- 7 MRS sweatshirts
- 2 mother of the bride shirts
- one more keepsake cap from a gown — initials appliquéd on a Richardson trucker
Something I noticed sorting them: the wedding years are all over the place. Some are for weddings that have not happened yet. Some are for anniversaries going back decades, made from a dress that has been in a box the whole time. Both make me a little emotional, honestly.
Baby clothes and hospital blankets
13 pieces from baby fabric this week. Eight MAMA sweatshirts cut from baby clothes — though not all of them said MAMA. There was a DAD, a MOM and a GRAMS in that stack too, and several with little ones’ names stitched underneath.
Four more came from hospital swaddle blankets, the ones people mail me still folded the way the nurse folded them. And one Christmas stocking pieced from baby clothes, which means the holiday keepsakes have officially started. They all live in memory keepsakes.
Nurses
Eight nurse keepsake sweatshirts — labour and delivery, NICU, OB tech, mother-baby. A couple were made from hospital blankets, one was a quarter zip, one had side bows. Nurses know exactly what they want, and I love that about them.
Fall finally showed up
Three seasonal pieces: two orange sequin bat sweatshirts and a plaid pumpkin crewneck. Small numbers, but it is only September. Last year Halloween did not really land until the end of the month, and then it did not stop.
And the rest of the table
Four sports number shirts, three of them for one lacrosse team with sticks on the sleeve. Five senior mom shirts — four photo tees in navy and one “It’s Fine, I’m Fine”. Two grandparent sweatshirts, one of them carrying eleven grandchildren’s names in stick figures, which took some planning. Two weighted blankets, including a big one in fabric the customer sent me herself. And seven sleeve personalisations added to other people’s shirts.
If you want something made
Everything here is made by me, to order. If you want to send me fabric — a wedding dress, a christening gown, baby clothes, a hospital blanket, a loved one’s shirt — you do not need to send the whole thing. About a 7 by 15 inch piece is all I need for a keepsake sweatshirt, so a dress can stay whole. Order the listing you want, then message me and I will tell you where to post it.
If you would rather watch than read, I put the real ones on Instagram as I finish them — @bbiad. That is where the sequin football and the keepsake cap both went up this week.
Now, back to the machine. There is a lot of brown gingham left.