:: March 2001 
Feature
Embellishing Store-Bought Clothes
It's time to look for an Easter dress or a spring outfit that makes you feel like winter has run its course. As a child, I wore my last year's Easter dress on Palm Sunday and my new spring dress on Easter.
If you sew your own clothing, you can design and accomplish any look you want. If you enjoy needlework but don't operate a sewing machine, you will need to shop for a garment that lends itself to the type of fibre embellishment you like to do.
I came across just such a dress in a local department store. Naturally, the store carried one dress in the same style from size 6 to size 16. The dress is navy blue with yellow machine embroidery of flowers and vines on each front panel. To my eye, the machine embroidery looked like a mere outline for the flowers I saw in my head –--fuchsias, lavenders to purples, and green leaves.
I purchased the dress and took it home to my box of rayon threads. By simply filling in the shapes of flowers and leaves with pretty colors, I created a dress that better reflects my own tastes. A secondary benefit is that I am now in no danger of running into anyone else in town who will be wearing "my" dress!
I used flat stitches of DMC rayon floss doubled to make my work go more quickly, and did not worry about making the flowers and leaves completely opaque. This was my stitching method:
Step #1 – Up through the fabric with the threaded needle, keeping
the knotted tail on the underside of the garment.
Step #2 – Down through the fabric with the tip of the needle near the opposite side of the outlined flower or leaf.
Step #3 – Up through the fabric with the needle close to the hole made by
Step #2. In this way, the thread is not carried under the cloth and creates a flatter shape. If you want a bunched effect, however, you can carry the thread underneath.
In the time it takes you to watch a couple of rented movies (forget the theater – you have to be able to see your stitching), you can transform a store-bought garment into a more accurate expression of your personal style without having to make the garment itself