Mission Accomplished?

You be the judge. I of course couldn't get them to stand still long enough to take good pictures. The other little boy in the jacket over a Spiderman costume is Dallan's friend, Lawrence.

The Aang collar does have the little pie-piece cut out of the front, but she kept turning it sideways.

I even made little webbed feet things to put over Dallan's shoes. You can't see them very well b/c of the bag, but they were velcroed (is that a word?) around his shoes.

The Quest for the Costumes

It's that time of year again. This year is proving to be stranger than any previous. Recently, we started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with the kids. Since then, my little girl (yep, the girl) decided she wanted to be Aang for Halloween:

Then there's the boy. At first he said he wanted to be a Chomper. Thankfully, he changed his mind and decided he would rather be Perry the Platypus:

The helicopter is optional.

Halloween Costumes!!

Okay, so I know this post is a little late, but I thought you might like to see the dinosaur costumes I made the kids for Halloween. Dallan's tail came out really nice, if a bit long.

Roly Poly Fish Heads

Story time! This is entitled "Why Amy Is a Great Big Sucker". A couple of weeks before Christmas holidays, my son's school sent home a form asking for volunteers to help with the school play. (I should note here that my son is only 3, and therefore too little to be in the play.) They needed people to help build sets, make programs, sew costumes...Hey! Sew costumes? "I can sew! I'll offer to help out since I adore the school, even though my son won't be in the play," I thought to myself. I filled out the form, and handed it back in.

Never heard from them. UNTIL. Wednesday morning I get a phone call saying that they are desperate for people to help them sew costumes, and can I come by between 8:30 and 3:30 to help. I of course had to reply that I would love to help, but I work full time, so those hours were a no-go. However, I added that if they had a project for me to take home, I would be happy to. They said "Oh yes! We could definitely use your help with the eel costume. Come on by anytime today & pick it up." An eel? How hard can that be, right? No problem.

I swing by the school at lunch time to find 3 women busily toiling over costumes with fabric glue and glitter. I walk in and introduce myself & they all gasp "Ooooh! You're the Sewing Lady!!" Ummm... Here's the point in the story where I should mention that my sewing skills are novice level at best - certainly not the calibur of someone to be given the moniker "Sewing Lady"! So with these 3 grateful looking ladies gaping up at me like puppies, I walked over to where they were storing the "to-do" projects. No eel costume. Instead I get handed three of these:



"We need two the same size as Kayti's, one the same size as Sam's, and one the same size as Holly's." Then she hands me a massive bag full of fabric and sends me on my way. Let's review: novice seamstress has just been handed 3 finished products and a bag of fabric and now has to reverse engineer them. Let me also add that these fish heads were all seemingly the SAME SIZE.

I dutifully took them home and began toiling away. My first batch was an absolute disaster, complete with weepy tears. Thursday, I tried again, this time with the attitude that "this is for a little kids' play - not an oscar nomination. They'll get what they get & they'll like it!" This yielded a bit more success. Friday, I kidnapped Kathy & between us we got all 4 of them sewn.



Yesterday, when I dropped them off at the school I pointed out to them that they hadn't given me the velcro for the chin piece. They promptly asked me did I have time to sew it on now. "Nope! Gotta go to work! Glad I could help. Good luck!"

Speedy Gonzales never moved so quickly...

Halloween fun abounding!

Okay, so this is going to be a somewhat lengthy post. Let's start with the costume parade. The good news is that I managed to finish both kids' costumes in plenty of time for the Halloween Carnival in my neighborhood. The bad news is that my son up & decided that he did not want to be Diego anymore & has decided that he hates his costume. *sigh* Oh well. The better-than-the-good news is that there were Moms coming up to me left and right at the Carnival complimenting me on Julia's costume! *huge grin* That almost made up for it. I'm just disappointed that the boy didn't like his. I thought he'd be excited about Rescue Pack at least, but he flatly refused to wear it. :( Without further ado, here they are:



Just to shamelessly brag on my cutie pie a little bit, here are a couple of extra shots of her & her sweet face:




Okay, so costumes done, I decided it was High (pun intended) time to actually carve a real pumpkin. There is a contest on the KOL forums for pumpkin carving, so Kathy and I got together & created the Lihc & the Gargantulihc from the game. Like so:



After snapping the photos necessary to enter the Pumpkin carving contest, we were not content to leave the pumpkin as-is, so we doctored him a bit, then a bit more, and a bit more...More. MORE! Until finally we ended up with this creation:



I'll try and snap some more pics of him at home in the evening, when maybe you can actually see him lit up. I'm woefully bad at that, so I will try.

Happy Halloween everyone!

Some of these people actually started by felting their own materials...

We took a field trip today, my sweetheart and I, to the Center for Puppetry Arts downtown. They added the Jim Henson special exhibit since my last visit (I SAW THE REAL SWEDISH CHEF HELLO!) and if ever there was a museum for crafty folk this has got to be it.

Papercraft puppets, wooden puppets, fabric puppets, puppets from hundred of years ago and of course, the detailed craft work that went into all the Henson stuff...I mean you could see how some of the stuff was stitched together. Also interesting was to see some Muppet characters from the films - as was pointed out to me, it's obvious that Henson was aware that you could capture much finer detail on film. Fishface from Labyrinth and the Skeksis from The Dark Crystal were both great examples of this:
I don't know how much you can see from this detail, but the costume alone is an intricate work. It is delicate layers of aged, torn, once highly intricate laces and velvets. The kind of fabrics that manage to suggest long-faded nobility. Not that you could see the detail in the movie, but the overall effect is something you would respond to subliminally.

What defines a "master" craftsman? Well, thereyougo.

I've been working! I have proof!

Okay, so I recognize that I've been woefully neglectful of this blog of late, but I have actually been working. In fact, I would have posted sooner, but I just kept forgetting to have my camera & a computer occupying the same space at the same time. Without further ado, here are some shots of the costume I've been working on. You might remember me mentioning that I was going to make a little fairy costume for my daughter and her very Elven ears. I'm still working on it, but it's nearly complete. I have a few layers of leaves left to put on & I'd still like to do a little headpiece.

Now, some explanation for why this costume has taken me so painfully long. I was under the delusion that if I sewed the flowers onto the bodice that they would be less likely to fall off, and it would generally look nicer. After about 3 weeks of getting 3 or 4 flowers sewn a night, I said "Screw this" and took out my hot glue gun. Can I just tell you - I LOVE my hot glue gun. It is an absolute boon for projects such as these.

Here's where I was a couple of weeks ago(pre-glue gun):

And here is where I am now. I thought it would be best to try it on her to make sure that it would still fit (thank goodness it does - albeit it's a little short when she stands up or crawls, so I'll be buying a pair of green tights for her to wear...maybe I'll tack a few blossoms or leaves onto them just for fun if I get the boy's costume done in time!)

Here she is modeling it:

Once this is done, I have to move on to Dallan's costume. He is going as Diego from "Go, Diego, Go!" I chose this for several reasons: 1) He is still too little to really "get" the Halloween concept, so I can still choose for him. Next year I won't be so lucky. 2) This is what Diego looks like:



Easiest. Costume. Ever. I have purchased a Diego lunch bag that has the little badge that's on the vest, which I can then cut off, and, you guessed it, HOT GLUE to the vest. I bought the vest from LLBean & we have cargo shorts & hiking boots already. All I have to sew is the Rescue Pack. Hopefully that will only take me a couple of hours. (Famous last words)

Planning ahead

So, let me start this off by telling you a little bit about my daughter. Bless her heart, she's as cute as a button, but sadly for her she got her Mommy's ears.

Here, I'll show you:


Given that combined with the fact that her hair isn't coming in very rapidly, I figure she will still be pretty eartastic come this Halloween. One of my motivators for learning to sew is that I really want to make my kids' costumes. My mom always made ours, so that's just something I want to do for them. All of these factors combine to inspire me to dress her up as a little fairy/sprite/pixie (choose whichever moniker you like best) for Halloween. I started poking around on the web & found this:

Fairy Costume

Now I will be doing more of a Spring color scheme, because as you can see, little Miss Julia is not an Autumn, but that's the basic idea. I have the slip and a good handful of the flowers (thanks, Kathy for going with me to buy a bunch of them.) I also have the glue gun all ready to go. Now I just have to hope that the slip I bought will still be big enough in 5 months. Hrm, I think I should try it on her when I get home today...