Neatnik's Brownie troop had their annual end of year party last week. Since they have all just finished the third grade, they "flew up" to Juniors. It is kind of bittersweet: I am proud of my daughter for sticking with scouts and love seeing her conquer new obstacles but at the same time I miss my tiny little baby girl who needed me for everything from diaper-wiping to shoe-tying.
Earned their wings
Our troop has been pretty active. Neatnik has earned about two dozen Try-It badges and the back of her vest is adorned with a plethora of activity patches. Sadly, her vest is the only one which has all of its patches, badges, and insignia affixed. Most of the other moms have tried to rely on ironing on the these items because the packaging says that they are iron on. Here's the catch, though: you can iron them on and they will stick for a while but eventually they fall off again.
I iron the emblems to the vest for positioning and then I machine stitch them for permanency. I haven't been so diligent about Neatnik's tae kwon do pants, though.
Her martial arts school issues little stars for certain kinds of achievements in and out of class. These include gold stars for good grades, silver stars for outstanding attendance, orange stars for community service, and blue stars for reading books. Every ten books earns a blue star. At the last graduation, Neatnik earned four blue stars, three orange stars, and one gold and silver star each.
At the party this week, the troop leader shared that someone at council turned her on to Patch Attach.
It looks like your basic while all-purpose glue.
You put the glue on the back of the patch, let it dry, then iron the patch to the fabric.I plan to continue sewing the patches to the scout vest but those tae kwon do pants... You see, the stars are small and, well, star-shaped and they go on the outside leg of the pants. It is a pain to machine sew a patch to a tube and hand-sewing them is out of the question. Last time I tried, I punctured myself repeatedly with the eye of the needle because the
The craft store was out of Patch Attach but they did have lots of Liquid Thread.
The lady at the store assured me that it would work just as well. The packaging says that you can wash and dry and even dry clean the fabric and the glue will hold.Neatnik had a belt promotion coming up really soon, so I bought a tube and affixed the nine outstanding stars to her pants.
That's a lot of stars!
I took no chances with the stars until the star application and her promotion. She wore her backup pants for the days before graduation.
Sadly, on graduation day, two stars fell off right onto the floor and several others showed signs of wanting to escape. Number Guy and I each sewed down one of her blue stars on Friday. He bent a needle and we had to chuck it: these are tough stars!
As of right now, Neatnik has five stars sewn down properly, five more that are somewhat glued to the pants, two which were glued down and fell off the pants and eight more new ones from graduation which need attention.
I am seriously considering purchasing some black black grosgrain ribbon,
sewing the stars to it with the machine and then sewing the strip to the pants. Hand-sewing a straight line along the edge of the ribbon will be much less painful and much faster than sewing these Comments, anyone?
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10 yarns:
That's a lot of tedious sewing...I still have my Girl Scout sash with my badges somewhere in a box....
You could try getting a leather quilting thimble with the metal guard. You can go to Amazon and search for "Leather Nimble Thimble With Metal Tip" and you'll see what I mean.
These protect your finger and can give you extra pushing power.
You could try sewing just the tips of the stars. Then there are only five spots to sew.
A different type of needle might help, too. Upholstery needles are made for heavier fabrics and might work better.
If using a sewing machine you could try sewing around the star and just catch the tips of the star. It might be easier.
Just a few ideas...
I like the ribbon idea - clever.
My son's karate instructor used to put "stripes" on their belts for accomplishments and attendence (Using colored electric tape). Every third stripe lifted them a belt level. My son is now a second degree black belt.
No idea, but the stars do look dashing on her pants!
I think that the ribbon idea is a very good one! That way you have the best of both worlds: machine sewing the stars, and then hand sewing on the "tube" of the pants leg!
love the ribbon idea. not only will it be MUCH easier but if something happened to the pants it would be easy to transfer to a new pair.
I was going to suggest the same - sew to a strip and then attach that to the pants. Can you even sew to a velcro tape and sew the other tape to the pants? Then they can be removed for washing and re-installed on the next set of pants.
Congrats to Neatnik!
P.S. Hybrid is ready for you when you want it....
That's a lot of stars! I'm with you on the ribbon.
I like your idea of sewing it to a fabric ribbon - then she can still have them, even after she outgrows the pants.
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