Asterix

My local fabric shop has now got in loads of thick sweatshirt fabric in a large variety of colours. I snapped up some in red to make another pair of trousers for The Boy, hot on the heels of the last pair (and with the same pattern) and this pair got finished very quickly.

After last time I bought 1m20 to make sure I had enough length for the legs, and even after extending the leg length on the pattern I had loads left at the bottom. No cuffs needed on this pair.  I also reinforced the knees again,  concentric circles this time for a change and the consultation that I undertook on patch placement before sewing paid off: user feedback is very positive.

 

These didn’t just sew up quickly because I’d just made a pair (although that helped), but also because I had a deadline, namely Dress French or Spanish Day at school.  I  knew that The Boy would want to dress French themed rather than Spanish, for he is learning French not Spanish at the moment, and I wasn’t entirely comfortable with sending him dressed as an onion seller, as my friend put it so well, national stereotypes are lazy racism. So I racked my brains, trawled the internet, and came up with Asterix, which was a great success.

Turns out that the left overs from the Trains Pride T shirt were the perfect accent colours, the dark green and yellow made a suitably cartoony belt…

… and the light green made a covering which transformed an empty Robinson’s Squashed bottle (sourced from a kind soul on a local freecycle group) into a magic potion bottle. I left out the sword I didn’t think taking one to school would end well.

The helmet was made by yours truly out of cereal boxes, masking tape and silver spray paint and The Boy made the wings.

The prototype moustache was fleece, but I just found time to knit a Sven for him to wear as he’s lost the moustache my friend knitted him previously.

Hooray for Asterix and a good excuse to borrow a bunch of the books from a friend to remind ourselves how great they are (kept both of my kids and a visiting one quiet for a while). The costume went down well with his teachers and some older pupils, but his class mates were convinced that he was dressed as someone from ancient Greece. Oh well, we know better.

The red trousers though I’m hoping will be wardrobe stable as the weather turns colder.

Costumes

This Tuesday, The Girls year at school will be having a Greek Day. Which is going to involve “a carousel of activities throughout the day” (your guess is as good as mine), a Greek feast (we’re signed up to take in a jar of black olives), and instead of school uniform they “may come dressed in Greek attire (a sheet!)”. Ha.  After extensive research (half an hour sat on the sofa using internet search engines) I decided that to be a Greek in a Sheet, you need for a minimum two seperate bits of sheet that you can pin together at your neckline.

Sewing together seemed more secure though. So, here is the Chiton (pronounced Ki-ton, as in “I’ve got a kite on”, well as far as I can tell, I’m no ancient Greek expert), which is indeed made from a part of a sheet that  I never used (the rest is now in the stash) and a bit of appropriate looking ribbon that was lurking in my ribbon box.  It may, or may not, be a Doric Chiton, but it definitely didn’t cost $45. And the belt is included, the middle of it is even sewn in place at the back, to prevent it from getting lost.

The drapey over thingy is apparently a Diplax, as shown here and is just a hemmed bit of nasty synthetic fabric that I’m not even sure how I acquired which I’ve pinned up with safety pins (on the inside, cos they’re not so authentic).  I’m really glad I found Serial Hobbyist Girl’s post because it gave me the confidence to go with not white and I reckon the Diplax really makes the costume.

Family Photo Upon Arrival

It actually got called into service before Greek Day, as we all went to a Mythical Themed Ceilidh yesterday. Turns out Greek costume (and simple vaguely Greek style hairdo) plus stuffed owl toy is perfect for being Athena. Bonus. The Boy on the other hand wore a fairly normal combination of his own clothes, plus made himself a copy of Mjolnir and hey presto, he was Thor. Long Suffering Husband kept up the father/son thing and went as Odin, in Travelling Stranger Mode, complete with labelled origami ravens and a bandage over his “missing” eye made with conveniently see through muslin that our christmas pudding came wrapped in.

Action shot where you can sort of see the skirt and possible the tail. (I managed one dance before abandoning the mask. A fellow dancer was apparently stabbed in the armpit!)

That left me. Originally I had great plans to use this as motivation to finally make the gabriola skirt up in blood splatter effect denim, which is surely the basis of a great costume, but I didn’t get around to it in time. So, this is my last minute unicorn costume, cos if you already have a 3D unicorn mask lying around the house (from World Book Day 2017) it’d be a shame not to use it, right? Except being made for my daughter the mask didn’t actually fit me, so I had it pinned on top of my head instead. I quickly ran up a waistcoat out of cream fleecey/fake fur stuff. And then went a bit mad and started a muslin of the Gabriola skirt at 4pm on the day we were going out at 7.30pm (with break for cooking and eating dinner).  I used the white reverse side of some curtain fabric. To say it was rough and ready would be generous. I didn’t realise until after I started that I didn’t have all the pattern pieces printed. And then I found out I didn’t have enough fabric. So, this is the gabriola yokes, front and side and a random bit of the right size at the top sort of rectangular bit of fabric at the back, no waistband, rough and ready zip, and then a kilt pin  holding it in place. Oh and some netting strips being a tail. By the end of the night I needed to change into my emergency jeans as part of the seam had come undone at hip height. But I’m counting it as enough of a fitting muslin to mean I can go ahead and try it in my real fabric, I think the size is good enough to just need minor tweaks and it’s definitely a good skirt for dancing in.

So, maybe this year I will actually finish and Gabriola, or two. Only time will tell.  (I have given up making pledges, my soul dies a little every time I break one.)

World Book Day

When taking my obligatory World Book Day photo’s I realised that I had sewn more in Feb than I remembered (I told the Stashbusting group that I’d bought lots and sewn little. The former is still true though).

This dress for instance (and yes it is a dress, though the bottom portion is mainly hidden, I couldn’t be bothered making a t shirt when she hasn’t worn one in months). Not my first choice of fabric for her (bought for me in fact, still a little left though) but the most “Astridey” that I had. By the way, Astrid is a character in the film/tv How to Train Your Dragon. The Girl is reading her way through the books at the moment, but they have very few female characters and her friend assured her there is a book of the film with Astrid in so it ticks the World Book Day box (and seriously, my kids read enough, I promise, we have more problems getting them to stop reading in order to eat etc).  Anyway, I made a very simple dress as apparently none of her current clothes would do (she kind of had a point, butterfly prints aren’t very “viking”) using the same pattern I used last summer. Two pieces, a bit of shirring, bam, you’re done. Shame I forgot the neck is very wide and low, need to fix that  should I make it again.

And the skirt, made in some horrid velour finish denim that I unadvisedly bought online thinking it was something different. Looks usefully a bit leather like though. The skirt is lined with black scraps after it was declared “too gappy”.  It was going to have some studs added (like the very simple selvage headband, but  a bigger size) but I ran out of time and energy. The outfit was originally made for her birthday party and after hubby and I had  made simple drawstring viking style party bags with it (using ribbon and a pony bead to close them, you can just see hers attached to the special loop on her waistband) this stuff was about all gone. Yay. Shame I bought purple too.

If the shoulder armour looks familiar it’s because I used the free pdf pattern from Falafel and the Bee, thanks guys! I got each set out of 1 A4 piece of craft foam, punching holes with my trusty hole punch and using a butterly clip to fasten them and gaffer taping safety pins on the back for fixing. Sheild painting was a party activity, I’m pretty impressed  with hers!

The Boy, on the other hand, made his outfit all by himself, turning a waistcoat back to front, utilising his skateboard pads, adding logos and generally using lots of masking tape. (Including to hold the tin foil onto his shoe to mimic a rudimentary metal prosthetic foot).

Oh, except for the grieves, which were prototypes for the Girls and are laced with elastic for ease of getting on/off. (A smidge more of the dreaded fabric gone).  I didn’t make the complicated dagger and sheath affair though.

And it’s all over for another year. I wonder what we’ll end up doing next year?

(I can’t find a photo of my favourite, the Nooks with Books on Hooks, so I’ll leave you with these random robots from our first ever participation in world book day)

 

 

 

You can have any colour, as long as it’s black.

It’s that time of year again. The turning of the year. The leaves have finally started falling and are doing it in abundance, the clocks have gone back, the days seem darker, there is rain about and kids. Kids everywhere as they are off school for the week.

Not unsurprisingly, this has all led to a lessening in my sewing output, helped along by an intermittent stomach bug (that thankfully only seems to affect me).

The only photographic evidence I have of the shirt, back in the happy days of the project before I started attaching sleeves and it all went wrong.

Also, I had a setback. I started a shirt, I was being good, using stash for a “wearable muslin”, so I could justify buying some new fabric I’d spied. So I pieced it together out of leftovers, but then I came to try it on and the sleeves are too tight. (Well, one sleeve is. The second isn’t sewed up as I realised I’d topstitched the seam allowance at the shoulder down before finishing it). Properly too tight. As in I can get it on but I can’t bend my arms in it. At this stage, I realised that my “scraps” of fabric were very precious to me and I’m now sulking big time at the waste, unable to work out how to proceed (not enough fabric left to cut much more than a new sleeve cuff, let alone two whole sleeves and with 2 colours of fabric being used already I didn’t want to introduce a third into the mix and I don’t wear sleeveless tops). I’m edging towards finishing it anyway and then finding someone (with big bust and thin arms) to foister it onto, but my motivation on that one is low.

My motivation on my next projects is low too as they’re all much needed bulky jumper type garments where even appropriate “muslin” fabric is fairly expensive and I’m worried about encountering the same fit issues. (Namely the sleeve size corresponding to my upper bust measurement being too small, but the full bust measurement being too big at my upper chest). Plus they seem “big” projects and I’m not sure I have the energy. Woe is me, cue the violins.

getting ready

However, with Samhain/Halloween/All Hallow’s Eve tomorrow, the kids are all excited about dressing up and going Trick or Treating (there aren’t many sweets to be had in this house usually, cake yes, chocolate maybe, but sweets have a half forbidden allure). So we have some costumes to cobble together. Unsurprisingly the boy is being semi secretive, ridiculously complicated, unrealistic about time scales and bad at clear communication. I fear a temper tantrum tomorrow. His sister, however, is more practical, having briefly considered being a Mummy (of the ancient Egyptian variety) she then went with witch, as she had no strong opinions and we already had the dress. Hooray. (Note for any curious American readers, contrary to rumour, we do “have” Halloween in the UK, but the costumes are almost exclusively on the ghost/vampire/zombie/witch/black cat spooky/scary theme – rather than the general dressing up fest it seems to be stateside.

Now, I’m all for home made costumes, for many reasons, including the fun of making them, the flexing of your imagination, not buying badly made itchy generic outfits that have been made under who knows what circumstances and will likely be worn only once. This year I have added safety to my list, after watching this interview with Clauda Winkleman about how her daughter caught fire. (Although I’m aware that there’s still a lot of synthetic content in her dress, at least her outfit has a lot of cotton fabric too).

Not so sunny hat

So, the hat problem raised it’s head. Last year I made my daughter a paper witches hat, this year she wants better. But after seeing the clip above my reservations about buying one are increased. However, I didn’t think I had any black fabric in my stash, and I don’t want to buy any (none bought in October so far, don’t want to stop now).

So, I had a good rummage, and found a strange t shaped piece of black denim (left over from these trousers I think – which incidentally have just been passed on). She wasn’t that impressed as the warp threads are white, but I managed to convince her. I altered my much used Oliver and S bucket hat pattern. I extended the brim slightly outwards for a more witchy look and extended the side pieces upwards to a point. Of course, the crown is eliminated altogether, which misses out that seam (if you’ve made the hat, you’ll know what I’m talking about). Initially I just extended the sides of the side piece up to a point but that ended up way too tall, so I changed the angle slightly for a more proportioned hat. I just had enough fabric to cut out my pieces, result.

And then I assembled it, which was very simple. I interface my two side pieces (the point isn’t lined, I wasn’t after a reversible hat) and two of my brim pieces with my thickest interfacing (I would’ve done all 4 brims but I ran out of interfacing). I zig zagged around the inner and outer edge of the brim rather than using concentric lines of stitching to make it look less sunhatey.

spider

The spider was a joint effort between me and the girl, using an idea in the Boy Craft book I got the boy for his birthday. (Great book, with ideas suitable for all, as the “and girls” tag on the cover indicates, my slight irritation at the sexist title overturned by a Picture of a Boy Using a Sewing Machine inside. Although not all the ideas are sewing, there is woodwork (or should that be stickwork), junk modelling type stuff, paper mache and knitting too (yup, knitting, didn’t know that hand knitting technique, thanks).)

It’s basically a circle of felt, drawn into a ball, stuffed with offcuts of fabric, 4 pipecleaners sewn on for legs (we had to buy some especially as there were none black in the house – the girl insisted) and features stitched on. We think it looks pretty good.

So, that’s my “short” update. Hopefully I can post a picture of happy kids in not too flammable, not too wasteful costumes tomorrow.

Happy Halloween everyone.

Anna inspired cape

Hi there, how’re you doing? I hope the sewing gods have been keeping your bobbins full and lining up your pdf’s for you.

This week I have (probably unrealistic) plans for 3 woolly things with linings. This is the second started and the first finished. As The Boy decided to make his sister a dress for his birthday (blog post coming soon, well, as soon as he finishes it), I ditched my original idea of making her a dress (I didn’t want the competition!). Instead I decided to use the Oliver and S Forest Path cape pattern

to make an everyday wear cape that was inspired by Princess Anna (from Frozen of course)

Any resemblance? (excuse the photobomb)

I couldn’t find the fabric I wanted locally, so after a lot of dithering I bought some wool suiting online. Turned out I did too much dithering before purchasing, as it only got here the day before her birthday. Having given up on it getting here in time, I then rushed out to gather the other supplies needed and planned an evenings sewing to get it finished in time. Only to end up falling into a deep sleep before the kids bedtime due to unexpectedly having to take medicinal antihistamine (note to self, don’t believe the manufacturer when they say they’ve listed all the potential allergen ingredients in bold, read the non bold items too, just in case). Probably a blessing in disguise as there’s less pressure to rush when you start a project after the deadline.

The fabric is from Remnant Kings and is described as “Colourful cerise lightweight coating wool. Ideal for a light summer coat or suit … 30% Wool, 70% polyester … Dry Clean Only”. It was more than I normally spend on fabric, but I only needed a metre and I’m really happy with how the end garment looks. Note to self, sewing with decent fabric has the potential to make your creations look more professional. However, the fabric doesn’t seem so very different from the cerise boiled wool available locally at half the price. I’m not sure how different as having initially dismissed the boiled wool, I’m loathe examine it in more detail only to discover it’s the same stuff. Oh well, like I said, I only bought a metre.

side view

I also washed it on a wool cycle in the machine. Despite it being dry clean only. I was using Lladybirds theory of treat it how you want to treat the garment before you start. It seems to have survived fine although it stank of germaline when wet, presumably something they’ve treated it with.

Attatching the bobbles

I put bobbles on to mimic Anna’s cloak. I nearly didn’t, because they are so twee, but I knew my daughter would love them. They were the end of the roll and not quite enough, I thought I got some matching ones at another shop, also the end of a roll (hmm, local shortage of pink bobbles suggests that I am not the only person to be making something like this), but when I got them home they were bigger and orangier and clearly didn’t match. However, this lot went from the centre back to the curve at the front, so I decided that looked intentional. I attached the ribbon in my seam allowance, bobbles facing inwards, before sewing the main cape and lining together, like you do with piping. It went ok, but then when I clipped my curves I must’ve clipped the tape because one bobble each side under the arm had a snipped through thread and fell off, so I had to reattach them by hand. Other than that they went well.

Nearly there

The lining isn’t “proper” lining fabric, but a heavier fabric that colour matched better, possibly polyester satin, but I’m guessing here. My fabric knowledge is pretty low and the shops I use often have no labels on their fabrics. Anyway, it wasn’t as bad to work with as I feared and has added some weight to the lightweight wool which I think works well. I was good and tacked it in place before pressing it. My old sewing teacher would’ve been proud.

Mandarin collar

I used this tutorial to draft a mandarin collar. I figured I could always remove it if it didn’t work, but I’m really pleased with it. It’s 2cm high rather than 1″ as suggested, to scale it down a little (and because I had metric graph paper to hand 😉 ) and I changed the height by .5cm rather than 1/2″, but other than that I followed the tutorial exactly and it was remarkably easy. I didn’t bring the collar all the way to the front due to the overlap and I curved the end down. I also stitched some “stuff” on to make it look more fancy (no idea what to call this, not normally by cup of tea). I like how it came out. I was planning to put more “stuff” around the edge of the cape but the Girl vetoed it and I think she was probably right. Sometimes less is more. So now I have several metres of this “stuff” leftover and something similar yet different I bought in green (silly me, shopping without fabric samples so I bought both).

understitching on collar and hanging loop in action

The only other change I made to the pattern was to add a hanging loop to the facing, because why wouldn’t you?

chic

The buttons are just perfect, large, dark wood with a snowflake design painted on. I was so pleased to find those. (Yet I failed to get a decent close up of them sorry). I sewed them on with some vintage button thread I inherited.

Moon spotting

I’m really pleased with this make, it’s come out better than I’d imagined and looks really smart, like something that you’d find in a trendy kids clothes boutique (with associated price tag). As we’re coming up to spring here I’m hoping it will get a lot of wear and will take less persuading for her to put on (she doesn’t like layers, but I’m hoping the Anna factor will win her over, combined with the fact that its not fitted in the arms, a coat over jumper is a major uncomfortable issue with that girl!). I’m not likely to make this pattern again in a hurry (I don’t think she needs more than one cape) but if I had a timemachine the only thing I might change is to add a pocket. I realised at the end this doesn’t have one. I think you could get away with a welt breast pocket on the lining.

I think she likes it!

The pattern is a super easy make and comes together quickly. The instructions are good and cover things like gathering the seam allowance of the curves before bagging it out to help the lining lay flat – I would never have thought of that. And, with a few minor tweaks, I reckon it makes a good practical every day dressing up item too.

What’s your favourite every day dress up make?

Party Time

I’ve been busy sewing stuff for Me Made May and now I have a blog backlog. First up, the big reveal, what I made with these.

Well, a certain small girl got invited to a Worst Witch party. And seeing as how she’s into pink and pretty and floral things, there wasn’t an appropriate item in her wardrobe and our fancy dress box is rather short on witchy things.

I was going to find a big black grown up size t shirt to use as fabric, but I came across a slimmer fit one I never wear any more, that was 2nd hand to me in the first place.

First job, to cut off the collar, fold the raw edge in and handstitch into place to create a neat new neckline.

Cutting off the collar

The t shirt had a kind of faced vertical slit which I folded over on itself to make a placket. The bottom looked a bit fudged, but a few button holes and some “vintage” buttons (i.e. from my grandmother in laws stash) later and it looked grand (well, if you didn’t look too closely).

Fudged placket with new button holes and buttons

Those of you paying attention may wonder where the pink t shirt came in. Well, that was a bit of a red herring, it’s a current t shirt in good state that fits her so I used it to judge the amount I needed to take in the side and under arm seams.

Sizing

Now I had a really long t shirt top that would be a little baggy on her (always gotta plan for growing room). Next the skirt. I managed to cut 2 squares out of the drapey netting fabric which I didn’t hem (shock horror) and one slightly larger square out of the polyester lining fabric, which I did hem.

Then I did some rough caluclations to work out the approximate radius of the circle I needed for the waist (radius = circumference (in this case twice the t shirt width) divided by two times pi (which I approximated as 6)). I folded the fabric so I could mark the radius on several times, then drew my circle free hand.

The technical bit

.

Then I overlaid the three squares, each rotated a little, so I got 12 points and sewed them together in the middle around my marked cirle.

Overlapping squares with central circle

Then I cut the centre out and sewed it to the bottom of the t shirt. Actually a sewed it about 4 inches up which means the bottom of the t shirt is inside the top of the skirt hiding my raw edges. Pretty amazingly my sketchy first guess at waistsize came out just right (despite taking in the t shirt further after calculating and not remembering seam allowances). Also pretty amazingly the length came out spot on, nicely long (to allow growing room) but not dragging on the floor.

Then we just needed some accessories. A red scarf of mine to be the sash (tied the same side as on the cover of the book), a badge made by big brother, a hat made rather hastily by me and a broomstick I helped her make from a cardboard tube and some paper. Oh and not forgetting she found out her stripey socks, borrowed a “satchel” and made a cat to go inside it (which is the only way Mildred can get her cat aloft in the first book as it’s too scared to sit on the broomstick).

Mildred Hubble

I also decided to use the occassion as a spur to finish a cape that I started for her over 4 years ago (after her brother was given one). It’s shiney satiney horrid to work with fabric, semicircle, reversible, purple with silver stars and silver ric rack round the neck on one side and silver with purple planet and shooting star and purple rick rac on the other. It is not my finest work and I wasn’t inspired to take photo’s. Appliqueing satin is horrid, even though I interfaced the back. And as I guessed she didn’t want to wear it to the party as in the book the cloaks are all black. I made her wear it on the way though and she’s wore it since and used it as a blanket to cover her babies in their pram and a picnic blanket for them to sit on, so as an item it was well received, just didn’t meet the strict authenticity standards for the costume.

Non Standard Cape – the only photographic evidence

The dress I’m really pleased with though. The dropped waist really suits her. And she wore it the rest of the day after the party and put it on the next day. I was amazed, little miss only pink and flowery will do choosing to wear an all black dress. It has gone in her wardrobe rather than the fancy dress box. I am honoured. And I’m also kicking myself I didn’t bother to add pockets now. (I hate going back and altering things once I’ve finished them).

The Three Little Pigs and The Big Bad Wolf

Once Upon a Time, before it was Christmastime, Gosh-You’re-Really-Not-That-Small-Anymore’s Teacher asked The ProlificProjectStarter if she would make a spider costume for the nativity play.

While they were talking about costumes, the teacher mentioned that she would really like to have the time to make a ladybird costume for the children to wear as they had been looking at the book What The Ladybird Heard (and surprisingly it turns out that primary school teachers don’t have very much time on their hands these days).

Gosh, thought ProlificProjectStarter, that sounds a lot more interesting than doing all the things I’m meant to be doing and before she realised what was happening she was planning to make a ladybird costume as well as the two king costumes and a spiders costume for the nativity play. Except she thought she’d make the spider costume first to try out an idea, but in the mean time she could make some of the other animals from the book, a pig, a cow, a sheep, two cats, a dog……

Well, time passed (often in a blur with some screaming about being served vegetables and the like thrown in) and one day ProlificProjectStarter thought “I really ought to finish off those costumes I started”, which were just a white badly blind hemmed rectangle and a pink badly blind hemmed rectangle (she’d been using the costumes to practise her curtain making technique at the time) that were going to be a cow and a pig costume, oh and there were also a bunch of idea’s whizzing around her head.  But then she realised that her daughters class weren’t looking at What The Ladybird Heard anymore, now they were looking at the story of The Three Little Pigs.

So the ProlificProjectStarter dug out the pink rectangle, and the rest of the bargin piece of pink fabric that cost a £1 from the scrapstore and some pink felt from the scrapstore and some garden wire and she made Three Little Pigs costumes, with neckholes finished with bias tape (as she is learning all the time) that was cut from her horribly pink Tova muslin, elastic tabs at the sides from her stash (but don’t tell anyone that some of the elastic that came from her grandmother in laws stash looked suspicously like recycled bra straps) to help keep them on and make them easy to take on and off, pink curly tales that were tapered rectangles of felt sewn around garden wire (with folded over ends to prevent injury) and twisted, and pink felt noses with zig zag nostrils and elastic to keep them on.

She showed them to her children but instead of saying thank you they said “but where is the Big Bad Wolf”?

So she went back to her stash and found some mysterious black hemmed cottonish fabric that she had Never Seen Before and some black Fake Fur from the Scrapstore that sheds like crazy when you cut it and she looked in her Sew Chic Kids pattern book and nicked traced the hood of the parka and the neckline to make a hooded tabbard, held together at the sides with the waistband that was cut off the old leggins used for the spiders legs, and she made an ever so slightly tapered fake fur tail and some wolf ears made from triangles of fake fur with slightly smaller triangles of felt to be the inner ear and she tried many times to sew them on so they didn’t look like rabbit ears but she didn’t quite manage it so she added a wierd hanging down fake fur muzzle type thing with a felt nose on the end and decided she’d done all she could and went to bed.

But in the morning “But why is the wolf black not grey” said the children “and where is the Mummy pig outfit”?

“Oh s*d this” thought the ProlificProjectStarter “I can’t be bothered any more, there is no grey fabric in my stash and there isn’t enough pink left for another pig and how would such a simple costume differentiate between mother pigs and little pigs anyway” and she sent the costumes in to school where they were played with and the Harrassed Teacher with a Large Workload seemed to appreciate them and then the ProlificProjectStarter decided to do some sewing for herself as she would appreciate all the effort she made.

And what did she make?  Well, that is a story for another day……