World Book Day Costumes

Our school is one of those enthusiastic ones that goes in for fancy dress on World Book Day. Now, I know the cool parent response is to roll my eyes at being asked to come up with an outfit, but the fact is, I *love* making costumes, although having been a working parent I appreciate that finding time to do it is always an issue.

And never forget that you can get canny and develop a range of 'costumes' which are basically normal clothes plus some accessories. Step forward Charlie Bucket (t-shirt and jeans plus a golden ticket) and honourable mention to Harry and his Bucketful of Dinosaurs (t-shirt and jeans plus... well I think you can fill in the rest). Last year I'd primed youngest child to go as Little Red Riding Hoody, minimum effort from me, only to be disappointed when the school decided they weren't 'doing' WBD that year...

This year we had a theme, which was SciFi or Superheroes. Oldest is really into Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy at the moment and gave consideration to being Zaphod Beeblebrox, but this was dismissed for practical reasons of having to manage an extra head and arm during the school day. So instead we went for Han Solo, which I refuse to be apologetic about (there are Star Wars spin-off books, deal with it). Mainly though, I think he looked pretty cool. He wore his jeans with red bias binding tacked down the outside seam, with a white long-sleeve top from H&M (which I did buy specially, but he will wear again). I then made a little waistcoat from black cotton twill fabric, with a few pocket and loop details. Husband made the belt out of brown leatherette fabric and duct tape, decorated with Sharpie pens. He also made a blaster out of cardboard, and I tried not to be all liberal hand-wringing about my child playing with a toy gun.

Youngest was keen to be Catwoman, and to be honest the choices for female superheroes are a little limited, some of them are a little bit on the sexy side for a six year old. When she was younger my daughter spent quite a bit of time 'being' a character called Red Cat, so anything feline was always going to be popular. I made her a little velvet top with stand-up collar and an over-the-head mask complete with ears stiffened with cardboard. I have to confess that I mucked up the top a little. The zip was supposed to be at the back of the garment, but when Youngest tried it on it was just too tight across the shoulders (even though the velvet had a bit of stretch to it. But when we flipped it round so that the zip was at the front it was a much better fit, and even looked quite cool that way round.

I like making costumes because of the freedom it gives me to create, but also I often find I learn a new technique which helps in my other sewing. This time for example, I created my own bias binding to finish the neckline of Han's waistcoat. And Catwoman's costume taught me some useful things about accuracy in measuring and making patterns (ahem), as well as more practise with accursed zips.

And now that World Book Day is safely out of the way for another year, I can focus my efforts on sewing for ME! I've got a few projects on the go and will update soon...

Make a Pencil Skirt

So being unemployed does have its compensations, more time for sewing - yippee! I have made a bit of headway with my unfinished objects basket (finished off a denim pinafore for my daughter) been knitting squares for a blanket, plus getting costumes ready for World Book Day. So now time to start blogging about what I've been making...

I made this pencil skirt for my birthday night out in half term. These are definitely *not* the shoes I wore for the night out, that was a plenty of pints on the sticky floor kinda venue. But they look good with it I think.

So I started off by googling 'make a pencil skirt' and there are lots of great tutorials, this one on What the Craft particularly appealed to me How to make a Pencil Skirt.  Then I took my measurements. First my 'natural' waist - bend sideways as if you were singing 'I'm a little teapot' and that's where your natural waist is, seems quite high doesn't it? Then 'low' waist, which is sort of level with your belly button. Then hips, at the very widest part. Then I measured around my knees and added a little as I didn't want to be actually hobbled by this thing (more on that story later). Final measurement was from natural waist down to the point I wanted the skirt to finish, for the length of the skirt.

I made a basic paper pattern using these measurements (adding generous seam allowance) and then used this to make a practice skirt out of cheap lining material. Which was very fortunate, as the prototype turned out a little too snug (translation: it wouldn't go over my arse). So I let out all the seams equally (thanks to the generous seam allowance) and had something that basically fitted. I ended up needing to adjust it again over the hips as they then came out too big. But finally I was happy with it.  I then ripped the seams of this skirt and used them as pattern pieces for my real skirt. I found that I didn't need to add any darts.

The front is one piece and the back is in two pieces, as I needed to put a zip in as my fabric wasn't stretchy. I also planned a slit in the back for walkability reasons.

There is an invisible zip in the back of the skirt. I don't have an invisible zip foot for my machine, and although Youtube tutorials told me confidently that I could use a normal zipper foot, it didn't seem to work for me, so I ended up sewing the zip in by hand so that it truly was 'invisible'. I also machine hemmed, which I wouldn't normally do on clothes I make, because I think hand-hemmed looks nicer. But time was getting short and that red fabric frayed like a bastard...

To make the slit at the back I simply stitched around the seam that ran up the centre of the back of the skirt, up to the point I wanted the slit. Then I popped the seam up to that point with my seam ripper and removed any loose threads.

And there we have it, one party skirt, that I can walk in, and dance in.*


*but not as it turned out, go to the loo in, stairs also presented a bit of a challenge

Learning to Let it Go...

Firstly, apologies for the pun in the title, I just couldn't resist it... Even if you haven't spent any time recently  in the company of a girl under the age of eight, the Disney film Frozen has probably entered your conciousness on some level. But more of that later.

I hope you had a peaceful Christmas. Ours was very enjoyable, and although I hadn't made a Pinterest board of all the things I was going to make for Perfect Christmas, a fair amount of handmade festive things happened anyway, now I come to look back on it. I also completely relaxed about the children eating rubbish and watching telly, which has made the holiday particularly peaceful. I've warned them that it's back to gruel and strictly educational programmes for just 15 minutes a day come Monday.

Home-made stuff that I did this year included: Damson Gin (dead easy, just put damsons, gin and sugar into a big jar and leave in a cupboard for months), Christmas cake (easy to make in advance), and Gingerbread Houses (this was a bit faffy, but the children really enjoyed it). I also had a couple of lovely table decorations that were made by a very talented fellow WI member for our Christmas night out in mid-December. As the foliage was fresh it was looking a bit sad by Christmas so I headed out into the garden with a pair of scissors for new supplies. So I kind of made it myself, and will definitely be stealing this idea (and saving the pot & ribbon) for next year.

But of course I'm also desperate to be the kind of mother who just whips up a fancy dress costume with her sewing machine, so I did add a little stress to myself by promising youngest child a Frozen dress for Christmas. I used McCalls Costume pattern M7000, ended up going for the smallest size (3-4 years) as any bigger and it would have swamped my daughter, who has just turned six. Fabric came from trusty Fabricland, a slippery blue/silver slightly stretch jersey type stuff for the main dress and the net curtainy gauzy stuff (shown at the top of the page) with printed snowflakes and glitter for the top layer. There is a bit of lining on the bodice, I just used some grey cotton fabric I had in my stash. I muttered a bit about whether I really needed to do the lining at first, but it really does pull the costume together and make it more comfortable to wear.

Although I started at the beginning of December I was *of course* still sewing on Christmas Eve. All was going well until I buggered up putting in one of the sleeves and had to unpick it and re-do. But instead of stressing like I normally do (well, ok, there was a teeny bit of tension) I made a list of jobs that needed to be done and handed them over to husband. So he made mince pies while I sat and sewed, then the children decorated the cake (with Nana's help) while I sat and sewed. But by about 8pm the dress was done and I could knock back the mulled cider with abandon.

So was it worth it?

Absolutely YES! Smallest child is delighted with her dress and has been wearing it and twirling round the house in it pretty much constantly since. And I learnt a lot whilst making it (not least putting in a zip properly). Settling down on the sofa to finally watch the film on Christmas Day with her is a memory I will definitely treasure.

Harry Potter Party

It had to happen eventually, my bookworm boychild has read the full Harry Potter cannon and developed an encyclopedic knowledge of the Hogwarts world (he even shares Harry's birthday). So when asked what he would like for his birthday celebrations, the theme was an obvious choice...

There are some incredible ideas out there for Harry Potter parties, special mention goes to the My Harry Potter Party blog, which is possibly the ultimate in Harry Potter party planning. The books have a very strongly developed 'world', and while I was browsing the internet I found it heartening to see so much creativity sparked off as people made props, decorations and food.

We didn't go too overboard, as the boy just had a couple of his friends over, one of whom hasn't read the books. But it was fun making a few things, and I thought I'd share a couple of photos to show you what we did...

Robes
I made a simple set of robes for the Birthday Boy out of some super cheap black polycotton. After a bit of measuring of limbs, I cut out two large t-shapes, cutting the front piece in half down the middle. I was aiming for a sort of academic robe look. It was very quick & dirty and I finished them off just before the party this afternoon. Machine hems all the way!

Wands

My husband made these, and they really are pretty impressive! He collected likely looking sticks from the park and stripped the bark off. Then he took slightly larger diameter sticks to make handles, drilled a small hole and glued together. They were then stained and varnished.

Potions

We knew there had to be some potion making today, so I gathered up interesting looking bottles and filled them with a variety of liquids (in reality fruit juices and water with food colouring) and attached paper labels. For the record, my son would like to point out that Dragon's blood is in fact green. We also had strawberry laces standing in for worms and various sweeties.

There was a lot of giggling as they sloshed various 'ingredients' into the pan. One of my guiding principles in life is 'never drink a blue drink', one that today's party guests would concur with. When stirred up in my Maslin pan/cauldron, they ended up with this:

Food
There is so much food in Harry Potter, another reason why it makes such a great party theme. We had normal party food (i.e. I made sandwiches, carrot sticks and hummus, and the children chose to take their calories in the form of hula hoops) with a few Harry Potter touches. So we had some Hagrid's Rock Buns, Butterbeer (Fentiman's Cola with a new label, served in glass mugs) and then chocolate frogs and Bertie Botts Every Flavour beans for party bags.

The chocolate frog mould came from Ebay, and other supplies came from Rajanis, possibly Bristol's best ever supplier of party tat. Including knock-off 'gourmet' jelly beans...

And finally...

I think this is the favourite thing that we made: Golden Snitches. Basically a Ferrero Rocher with two feathers hot glue-gunned to the sides. Talk about instant craft! We used these to play Hot & Cold (we judged that this would last longer than a free for all 'Hunt the snitch')

Where's Wally Costume

My children have been invited to a birthday party - it's fancy dress... It's also Halloween on Monday and while I am not quite convinced about the whole Trick or Treating thing, my five year old is desperately keen to go out. The Toddler is a bit of a diva and will probably refuse to wear anything apart from maybe a bit of face-paint, so I'm focussing my energies on the child that will most appreciate it.

So he would like to be Wally, from the Where's Wally books (I believe he is Waldo in the US). I am secretly pleased about this as the costume would also come in handy for World Book Day.  I have been scouring shops for a red/white striped t-shirt but no joy, and then today most serendipitously I happened to be talking about fancy dress with a friend over coffee. It so happened that she had a suitable t-shirt in a bag of stuff to go the charity shop - perfect!  It's a woman's long sleeve top so is a little big, but I'll tack up the sleeves and put a few stitches at the neck. The Boy has a new pair of jeans and from the illustrations Wally appears to be wearing blue trousers so I think we're sorted there.

Which leaves us with the hat... I've never knitted a hat before so it's a new one for me. I did think about knitting it in the round but I don't really have the right size needles. The yarn is some specially purchased 100% acrylic from the local cheapy shop, wasn't keen to use some of my lovely yarn stash for this project!

So the heat is on, can I produce a creditable Where's Wally bobble hat before Saturday afternoon? Tune in next time to find out...