The Making of Danny Choo Tour Tees

So ever since Danny Choo announced that he was coming to London I had been thinking about how to dress the girls.

It started up really elaborate with wanting to dress them in Lolita gear. Realised that with current workload at RL job that was never going to happen.
Then it went to the phase of bodysuits and long boots. Only got one pair of long boots and another pair might not arrive on time.
Next one up was fitted short cap sleeved tees and short pleated skirts. Pleated skirts? Was I being nuts? Never done that one before so would take some fitting to get it just right so again, no time.
But the tee idea was pretty good and simple and maybe a short plain skirt… Or make it into a tee dress… Bit boring but fast… Maybe add a frill… Not very suitable in stretch fabric… Hmmm… Rummaging through my stash and found perfect thing: White frilly fabric bought in Marunan Shibuya, Tokyo! Cut it up and it would work perfectly as a frill at the edge of a tee. Right weight and everything. Perfect!
Already had stockings and knickers from my bunny print outfits so no need to worry about the lower part of the body as already dressed.
To make up for it being simple and well, rather plain I needed a print to make it a bit more interesting. Well, it could only be one thing: The Dancing Tokyo Trooper. And wanted it to be like a concert tee with the date on it. Bought some TAP paper a while back as it was being promoted as the printing paper that bonds to the fabric instead of sitting as a layer on top of it, so would work perfectly with the stretch fabric that I was planning on using for the tee dresses.
Idea generating done. Took a couple of days but got there in the end

Planned to do all this Saturday 10 April as I decided that I wanted to go to Brighton for a dollie meet Sunday.

Saturday morning I started of early in my search of… TAP paper! Could not find the stupid package so spent well, all morning sorting through papers and generally looking through my stash of fabrics and trims. No paper! Then, I open a drawer and in there, neatly tucked in with doll wigs and shoes lies a ziplock bag with… Well, you guessed it. Had I just opened that first my papers would still be in a mess ><

By this time it was afternoon and I was hungry and so was hubby. We went for lunch and well, that is another story mentioned earlier ^^
Something to do with a dancing Stormtrooper… Gave me the perfect pics for print of the tees though so time was not completely wasted

Arriving home late frozen solid and in no mood starting my project, also had some blogging to do so, well, no sewing got done on the Saturday.

Sunday was meet day and again, arrived home late and too tired to do any sewing.

Monday! Work work work and then home! Left, almost on time and went straight to the pattern paper.
Ding. Pattern done in less than 15 minutes.

First fit finished in 30 and no changes needed so initial sampling done in less than an hour.

Printing tests for sizing was over in three tries and ready to go to actual transfer paper.

Bit too big

Still too big

Just the right size

And the back

The print however took for absolutely ever! Bloody TAP paper did NOT work with iron on low settings but if turning up too high then the bloody fabric melted! ARGH! I ended up printing three or was it four sheets and ruining several meters of perfectly fine fabric until I found out: Put a piece of standard printing paper over the fabric. Turn the heat up on max. Iron back and forth for a minute and ta-da: Print stayed put!!!

First test print worked really well apart from it being ‘Through the Looking-Glass wrong ><

Finally!

Cut and printed an extra tee, did read that HE did not want pressies but hey, he did not say anything about his daughters
Finally could get onto the sewing part which worked fine until I forgot to change to foot on one of the hem seams and messed it up. Had to unpick it and again, took forever!

All done, dollies dressed, packed and ready to go at 2am in the morning.

And that is how you make Danny Choo Tour Tees ^^

Finished result at the “Creative Industries in Japan: an audience with Danny Choo” talk at SOAS, London.