Janet's Easy Method For Adding Yarn To A Grass Dance Outfit

As powwow season rapidly approaches, many parents will begin the annual quest to dress their kids. This blog entry is for the brave souls who make their own grass dance outfit & struggle to put yarn on it. These steps will walk you through MY WAY of doing it. After many years of making outfits, I've figured out what I think are the easiest ways of doing things. If you don't attempt to do this yourself, at least you can appreciate the amount of work it takes to make these outfits.

This photo shows a completed grass dance outfit that's ready to wear. It has 2 aprons, pants with yarn at the bottom, a shirt with yarn & 2 cuffs for the wrists. I usually make a front/back yoke for small boys instead of a shirt, because they won't outgrow it as fast. Yokes should be about as wide as their shoulders & come down to their waist, to make it through a whole year without being outgrown. Make the aprons about the same width & make them reach from the waist to the knees. You can put an extra wide casing a the top that can be let down during the summertime as they grow, and give yourself a couple more inches of growing room. Those wide thick athletic shoestrings are great for tying on boys grass dance aprons.

Older boys & men may also want beaded or cloth side-drops and a beaded or cloth harness that hangs in front. I'll have to address those in another blog post.

1) Start out by making & decorating your pieces. Finish the pieces before you start adding the yarn, because the yarn will get in your way afterward.

2) You also need something to wrap the yarn around. I like to use a plastic clipboard like shown in the photo at the right.

You need good sharp scissors that will cut your yarn, not chew it. 

3) You'll need 2 LARGE skeins of yarn for a toddler boys outfit, 3 skeins for an older boy & possibly 4 skeins for a teen or adult size outfit. I like to use multiple colors of yarn on a lot of my outfits, especially the ones for young kids. You'll need a skein of each color, and one or two skeins of your main color (red is the main color here). Mark the center points on the back side of your pieces with chalk or soap or a disappearing fabric marker. Use a ruler to measure out your sections accurately, so that your colors are evenly matched when you're finished.

4) Get ready to start sewing the yarn into place before making your first yarn loop. Place your finished apron piece with the back side up, underneath the presser foot of your sewing machine. Position the needle going through the apron about 1/2" from the edge. Start your stitching & backstitch to hold the thread in place. Remember to use thread that matches the front side of the aprons in your bobbin, so that it looks neat on the front side.

5) Figure out how long your yarn needs to be. Start wrapping it around your clipboard or hard surface that's the approximate length you want the yarn. Wrap it about 20 times around the clipboard at one time. Don't try to do too much at once, you'll have a hard time if you wrap it more than 25 times.

6) Slide the yarn off of the clipboard & center the top of the yarn loop underneath the presser foot, up against the needle that's already positioned in your apron.

7) Spread the top loop of the yarn out nice & even in front of the needle. Don't get it too thick, because it's going to be doubled over on the finished apron. You can spread it out into a single layer on a small boys outfit, but keep the yarn close so that it doesn't look skimpy.

8) After you've sewn through the top loop of the yarn (approximately 20 strands), then pull the yarn forward, and cut the bottom part of the loop evenly.

9) Continue wrapping the yarn & sewing it down around the edges until you've gone around all the edges and completed each piece.  

10) This photo shows the yarn sewn down once, all the way around an apron.

11) Now flip the yarn on the inside over and smooth it out evenly on the outside of the apron.

12) Put the apron back under the sewing machine at your original starting point, and stitch down the yarn about 1/8" - 1/4" away from your original stiching. This will insure that all yarn is stitched down twice, making sure it's secure & won't pull out easily.

13) Continue sewing down the folded-over yarn, all the way around the apron. Remember to back-stich when you start & end, so that your stitching doesn't unravel & allow the yarn to pull out of the stitching.

14) Flip your piece over & trim up the yarn evenly. It's done!

 15) If you are adding yarn onto a solid surface (not an edge) like on the yoke of a shirt, it's easy to outline your area with low-adhesive painters tape that won't leave residue on your shirt. Stitch the first time right next to your tape. The second stitching will be about 1/4" below the tape.

You can also use a sliver of soap or fabric marking pen to mark your sewing line on a shirt yoke when your sewing line is curved instead of straight, like the outfit pictured below. Trim up your yarn & you're done!

We recommend hand washing your grass dance outfit. Some dancers put their yarn pieces into a "delicate fabric" bag on gentle cycle in the washing machine & that seems to work okay too. Just don't throw your yarn pieces in with a regular load & expect the yarn to survive in a regular washing machine load - it won't! 

Happy Dancing!