Project Run and Play: Candy Candy

This blog post contains a very familiar story (at least I have read it in multiple blogs already). I stumbled upon Project Run and Play a while ago and read through the entire archive. I was very inspired by the designs and tutorials and dreamed about sewing along. I somehow never saw a theme announcement and was amazed how people knew what to sew that quickly.

Shortly after making my resolve to more actively blog about my sewing I did come across the Run and Play announcement themes! The first theme, 80's cartoon, which apparently excited a lot of people, actually scared me of a bit. Cartoon inspired cloths but no costumes, seriously no costumes.... I understood simply copying the cloths to also be in the costume department. I went through several option in my head but nothing really inspired me. I thought of rainbows, flutter sleeves and jumpsuits (looking at what people created I see many had these associations) but the project did not get a real shape in my head.

I had kinda already given up until I saw the first sew along projects coming in and read on Peaches and Bees  that she was also struggling with the theme at first but then just thought about what she watched in the 80's. I watched Candy Candy, according to wikipedia the original Japan show was in the 70's but in the Netherlands it was on television in the 80's. I have to admit that my most clear memories of the show is the bed spread I got (and still own) and a girl crying on a boat, but looking through the pictures of the show this week I found my inspiration. I loved the idea of a red apron dress and I immediately knew how to do it.

Last December I bought the Amaryllis dress pattern, because I simply had to have it. I had had several ideas on which fabric to use for it but the dress had not been made (or printed for that matter). I thought that if I would flip the back and the front of the dress, use two colors of fabric (one for each side) and  add a faux apron front I would have a pretty good apron style dress. I used two pieces of left over fabric, a sheet and a piece of red canvas like fabric that I once bought for making  pipping (this was at the start of my sewing adventure and had no idea how much I would need and just bought way to much. The red fabric was used totally, I even had to cut the circle skirt in three piece to make it fit. The front strings of the apron turned out a bit tight to turn, those two strings took more than an hour to turn!! I did not wanted to line the dress and that combined with my own adjustments did lead to a view construction confusions, but I am done with even some time to spare! Al in all I am satisfied with the result, I added some flutter sleeves because that seemed fitting with the whole theme.

No racoons here in the Netherlands (Candy Candy's pet) so my daughters favorite plush animals had to substitute.

 The red heart button came from my stash as well, the red and white match perfectly.

I assumed correctly that this dress would have a high spin factor, while spinning the fake underskirt shows, yeah!