Happy Halloween!!

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I really enjoyed eating all of my son’s candy, and look forward to sneaking more of it now that he is in bed. We had a pretty rainy Halloween this year, so we ended up going to the mall for the main trick or treating. Everyone did a double talk when they saw this mini-reaper walking amongst them.

The Grim Reaper is ready for your candy!

I didn’t get a picture (wish I had been faster), but there was one little girl (probably around 2) dressed up like a flower princess and she was quite taken with my son’s costume. She kept smiling and laughing and wanted to come up and see his costume close-up. She wasn’t scared at all!

Even the Grim Reaper is not above the seatbelt law!

This year’s costume was fairly easy to make, but I finished it at 3:30pm today – just in time to go get the candy. I made his creepy black robe, and of course we bought the mask at the store. He was really pleased with his costume and how scary he looked!

Keep it thimble!

A Very Snuggy Christmas!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Christmas! Now that the gifts are all given, I can reveal what I made for gifts this year – Snuggies!! Each person received a handmade Snuggie (aka Slanket aka Blanket with Sleeves (the boring name)) in a fabric of my choice, with each fabric print specially selected to complement the recipient’s tastes.

Everyone graciously agreed to have this picture taken and posted on my blog. Thanks everyone – this will be my most popular post yet!

Have a wonderful holiday! See you next year :).

Halloween!

I was hoping to get this posted yesterday, but I think today is fine – the sugar high has finally worn off! My son wanted to be a spider for Halloween this year. I was so proud of myself because we picked out the pattern and bought all the supplies in early September! I was going to get it down early, but of course I was sewing it at the last minute :). The costume is from McCall’s 6180, but with a few modifications.

I made legs longer and didn’t put the ruffle at the bottom. The ruffles were cute, but since he is a “big boy” now they didn’t suit him. I had a lot of trouble turning the tubes to make the legs (the fabric was very thick and it was a struggle), so I used black socks for the tubes instead. Since we wanted to have some bend in the legs, my husband taped up florist wire to create a frame, wrapped batting around it, and then we put the sock over it. It yield nice long and fat spider legs – but the costume was very heavy! My son was a real trooper and wore it to a party on Friday night, but we figured we could do something better for the legs for the BIG night.

For Spider 2.0, my husband taped together 6 dowels, and covered them with electrical wire. We then cut the legs off of Spider 1.0 and used the socks to cover the dowels. More electrical tape was used to tape around parts of the socks (which created a nice jointed leg effect). The legs were much lighter, but since they stuck out it was a bit harder to navigate. My husband rigged up a harness so the legs would slip over my son’s arms, and then we tied them down with a piece of ribbon. All in all, Spider 2.0 was a great success and he got a lot of compliments while trick or treating.

Hope you all had a great Halloween!

Sundress for Mom

My mom called me a few weeks ago to tell me about the cutest sundress her friend made for her granddaughter — the “Cuppy Cake” dress from Pink Fig Patterns. My mom fell in love with this dress and wanted to make an adult version for herself! Of course, I am always up for sewing with mom, so when I went to visit her we went right to the quilt store to get fabric. My mom picked out some beautiful purple and yellow April Cornell fabric for the skirt and we found a great purple in something else for the bodice.

The pattern was pretty easy, but I did have to re-size it so it would fit her. Luckily, my mom is petite, so we don’t have to change the length or dimensions of the skirt panels. I just needed to create a pattern for a larger bodice. Since the skirt was gathered, it would fit nicely on any size bodice we needed. My mom sewed all the skirt panels together, and then topstitched each one on both sides of the seam (16 panels in all!). I had the easier task of sewing the bodice and doing the shirring on the back:

It was hard to figure out how large to make the shirred panel as we needed to be able to get it over her head and chest, but also wanted to make sure the elastic was tight enough to hold the dress up. When I make this pattern again (one for myself), I can going to skip the shirring and put a zipper in the bodice so it will be more fitted.

Spaceship Apron and Sundress

My son had a birthday party a few days ago and the theme was Outer Space. My plan was to make individual drawstring bags for each child with this cool spaceship fabric I found at JoAnn’s. Needless to say, I was running short of time and didn’t have a chance to sew a bag for each child. (I did manage to personalize ready-made canvas bags for them – which still were super cute). Instead, I used some of the fabric to make myself an apron to wear to the party.

I love the colors, especially the orange ruffle and pocket. The pattern is by Cindy Taylor Oates from her “More Retro Aprons”. The yellow rick-rack turned out well – it was all I had to choose from in my stash.

On another note, I was able to get a great dress form from my friend Laura. She had this in her attic for years and sold it to me for a great price. She is about my height, so this is a petite dress form. My polka sundress (which I finished last week) fits perfectly :).

I’ve worn this a few time and people always ask me wear I got it. My standard reply is “this old thing? I made it myself.” They usually don’t believe me – one person swore she saw the same dress at target awhile back (then she asked me to make her one). I have the pattern and fabric for my next dress, so it should be finished in the next few weeks.

I am working on my next free pattern, I know it’s been awhile – so please hang in there!

Aloha – Hawaiian Shirt

I decided to try something different. I was at Jo-Ann Fabrics last week and saw their Hawaiian print fabric on sale for 50% off. In a fit of inspiration (or insanity) I thought it would be a great idea to make matching Hawaiian shirts for my son and husband. I’ve haven’t done much garment sewing and was second guessing this decision after I got home with all the fabric and the pattern. I started with my son’s shirt – I figured since it was much smaller that if I made mistakes it wouldn’t be as big a deal to fix them. The shirt was finished over the course of two days and I am very pleased with the results!

I used a Simplicity pattern and followed the directions exactly, even when I didn’t quite understand what I was doing. I had some issues with the collar, but when I just followed the directions instead of trying to overthink it, it turned out exactly as it should. The buttonholes were a snap since my machine has an automatic buttonhole maker. The great thing is, you can input a buttonhole size and it will then create as many buttonholes as needed that exact same size. Now I just have to make my husband’s!

Pumpkin Costume

My three year old is going to be a pumpkin for Halloween this year. He has been talking about it for several months, even after I explained that his costume could be anything he wanted it to be. After briefly considering a bumblebee costume for a day, he finally decided that he indeed wanted to be a pumpkin.

We headed down to Joann’s to get the pattern. The Butterick patterns were on sale for 99 cents, so of course that’s the only book we looked in. He was very pleased with the pumpkin costume they had:

I need to get an early start to get his costume finished in time. He has several opportunities to wear his costume in the last part of October, and I definitely want him to get the most out of it! I will post a picture when I am done.

Also, be sure to check back at the beginning of October for the first pattern in sewing club! It’s something you will need for Halloween :).