Hiatus

So, last spring I decided to take on the position of president of the PTA at my sons' school. The job really ramped up in early August, and since then-- I have pretty much found myself with a nearly full-time unpaid job. Crafting fell by the wayside. Like WAY by the wayside. While it just hasn't been in me to blog at all over the last few months, I have managed to make a few things:

A Concord Tee from Cashmerette Designs:

LOVE this design. I've purchased fabric for two more.

A cute, swingy dress from McCall's 6957:

Check out that stripe matching under my arm where no one can see it! But I know it is there. I don't think this is supposed to be a high-low hem (at least, not according to the line drawing), but that's how it ended up, despite the fact that I did a 1.25" swayback adjustment. It's fine though, because I like it.

An unintentionally sexy top from McCall's 6963:

I think the lowness of the drape is a result of the FBA I did. It is definitely a date night kind of top!

Some wizard vests (from Simplicity 8023), robes (from a lovely pattern from the SewingPatternPixie available through Etsy), and wands (no pattern there):

The accessories-- ties, scarves, glasses, Gryffindor patches, white button-down shirts, toad-- were all purchased.

I can't even get over my boys. They are awesome. And they just. keep. growing.

I also managed a few holiday gifts, including some Kismet Trinket Boxes from Sew Sweetness. (LOVE this design!!! These are seriously so fun to make!)

These are all the medium round size, measuring about 4.75" tall. I put little treats in them and gifted them to teachers and friends.

Finally, I also made some maxi-pads and panty-liners of my own design.

I feel like I should note that I do not generally make a habit of giving feminine hygiene products to my friends/family. My sister-in-law specifically requested these. :P

Relative to my usual output and craftiness... the last six months has been a serious dry spell, creativity-wise. PTA has kind of been all-consuming, leaving very little energy for anything else.

So! My new mantra starting a couple of days ago is "Life Balance." I am going to make a conscious effort to be present with my family, make my home a better place to be (cleaner, more organized), while at the same still doing my PTA job and also taking better care of myself by eating better, making time to exercise again (I miss running!), and plan dedicated crafty creative time-- including, hopefully, a little blogging. No problem, right? But, if I am conscious of these things, maybe it will help me to make better choices along the way. We'll see how it goes.

Hope you have had some wonderful holidays and I wish you a joyful start to 2017!

Halloween 2015: Jay from Ninjago

This year for Halloween, Little Bear decided he wanted to be the character Jay from Lego Ninjago. It was a pretty appropriate choice for him, as he is into all things Lego and ninja right now (he is even enrolled in a Ninja Zone gymnastics class!).

This costume was pretty straightforward. I used Simplicity 1037, using views A, B, D, and F and made the size 4. I was really pleased with the fit-- I measured him and everything fits very true to size (a pleasant surprise compared to some of their adult patterns!).

A couple things to note about the pattern: It does not include any instructions/advice for the additional ties (arm/wrists and legs) pictured on the cover. That wasn't a big deal (and I ended up not using them), but I was fully expecting them to be included somehow as they are pictured. Also, the instructions for finishing the tabard piece (D) are pretty lacking... I fudged my way through the suggested bias binding, but it is far from pretty. But, you know, galloping horse and all that. (Thank goodness!)

The only modifications I made to the pattern were to add shoulder armor to the tabard and then create the headband (both self-drafted). I was pretty happy with how the shoulder armor turned out, but the weight of the armor pieces pulled the tabard backward (making them appear to be shoulder-blade armor-- doh!). So I added some velcro to the underside of the tabard shoulders to connect with the top of the robe shoulders in order to help hold everything in place. It helped some, but the fix was no match for my active ninja boy! He could easily defeat the velcro with all of his jumping-crouching ninja moves. But for trick-or-treating, it worked fine.

This was a fun costume to make.

And I know he is happy because he has asked to wear it every day since I finished it!

Halloween 2015: The Purple General

Hope you had a fun and happy Halloween! I know it was a week ago, but I still want to document my costume work for this year. I'll start with the most complicated of the costumes made, The Purple General.

The video game of the year for Big Bear has been an indie game called, Skulls of the Shogun from 17-Bit.

One of the characters is a purple shogun, and that's what he decided he wanted to be. Mama did her best to make it happen:

This was a pretty involved costume! I used the character art and also found some pictures of traditional samurai and shogun garb to guide me. I ended up working in layers:

• Black t-shirt and sweatpants-- purchased,
• Bolero jacket with armored arms-- Butterick 4385 with self-drafted armor plating,
• A sash around the neck and a wide brocade belt-- Simplicity 1037,
• An armor-plated skirt-- self-drafted,
and, last but not least,
• The helm-- a lampshade base and a LOT of modification.

The helm seemed like the most important part to me, so that is where I started. It took a full week, 2-4 hours a day, to put it together. Supplies included the lampshade (and special wire cutters to cut it), black spray paint, duct tape, satin, foamboard, acrylic paint, Peltex, headliner foam, elastic, knit jersey, ribbon, Poly-fil, Nu-foam, fusible web, and (of course) some hot glue. There was also quite a bit of sewing involved in piecing the various parts.

Here's a picture of the inside. You can see the chin strap and the foam headliner I used to pad his noggin from the lampshade support crossbars at the top. And lots of duct tape.

I wish I had thought to take pictures in process, but in the thick of creation and problem-solving, pictures tend to be very far from my brain.

Thankfully, all of the disparate pieces came together in a pretty cohesive way and resulted in a very happy Purple General:

Worth it!

Halloween 2014: Venipede!

Video games are the hotness at our house! Both boys wanted to go as video game characters, Little Bear as a Baby Beefalo from the game "Don't Starve" and Big Bear as a Venipede, a type of Pokémon:

While the baby beefalo felt rather straight-forward, it took some time for me to wrap my brain around this insectoid creature.

For the main body, I went with old standby Kwik Sew 2711 in a size M. But because I didn't want a back opening (since there were the green carapace bits on the back), I used Kwik Sew 3099 to guide me on doing a front zip opening. Worked like a charm!

From that point, there was lots of customization:

• Did some color-blocking on the back and arms and machine appliqued the circles onto the back shoulders.
• The hood I created was influenced by a fabulous hat by StephyDesigns. There was a lot of color-blocking in the hood itself. I handstitched the stuffed antennae. The eyeballs were created with 2.5" styrofoam balls that I cut in half. I then used glue to cover them with fleece and handstitched them to the hood as well.
• The carapace pieces on the back were each filled with foam cut to fit and then machine stitched to the back. I did some handstitching inbetween the pieces to hold them together vertically.
• I pieced together the tail and then stuffed it using a combination of decorator foam cut to size as well as polyfil stuffing. After it was inserted in the back I handstitched it to the bottom carapace to stabilize it and keep it pointing outward
• The "legs" (the fin-like things on the arms and legs of the costume) were filled with decorator foam (helped them to stand away from the body nicely, without too much flopping about).

Phew! Thankfully, all of the work paid off. Big Bear LOVED his costume.

The Venipede is ready to battle! (And trick-or-treat!)

The boys had an awesome Halloween with LOTS of candy goodness! Yay, for Halloween costume fun!

Halloween 2014: Baby Beefalo!

This year for Halloween, Little Bear decided he wanted to be a baby beefalo. What is that, you may be wondering? While it is an actual creature, he specifically wanted to be a baby beefalo from the game "Don't Starve" by Klei Entertainment:

I started with a pile of fleece, faux fur and Kwik Sew 2711 (a costume staple for me over the last few years!) in size XXS.

I only had to make a couple of minor adjustments for this costume.

The biggest adjustment was with the back closure, pictured above. I wanted the patch of fur on the back to be an unbroken piece, so I layered it on top of the costume opening, stitching half of it down and then securing it with velcro tape on the opposite side. That allowed access to the costume opening, but kept the back furry part pretty clean looking. The downside is it made the costume a little too complicated for Little Bear to put on/take off by himself. But it was otherwise effective.

The other adjustments included color-blocking the sleeves and legs, creating the tuft on the hood, the tail, and the little horns.

Watch out! Baby beefalo is gonna charge!!!

He loved the costume!

Happy Halloween!!!

I'll be sharing costume pics next week! :)

It's that time of year...

A large stack of fleece, foam and fur? Yep. Costume time!

Wish me luck!

Halloween 2013!!!

Tomorrow I leave for Houston to attend the International Quilt Festival (woo hoo!!!!!!), so I have to write my annual Halloween post a bit early. While I am bummed I won't be at home to share in the festivities with my family, I am at the same time super excited to have the opportunity to go to Festival this year (woo hoo!!!!!!!).

In recent months, the hotness at our house has been a video game called Guacamelee! from Drinkbox Studios. My boys absolutely love this game. And truly, it is pretty darn awesome-- the art, the music (seriously, the music is incredible; we even bought the soundtrack!), the story, the mechanics, the different endings... way cool! So it was no surprise that when it came time to choose their costumes, Big Bear and Little Bear both wanted to be characters from the game. Big Bear wanted to be a yellow skeleton (because they're super fast!). Little Bear wanted to be a green skeleton (because they're green!).

I started by perusing eBay. There I found sombreros of appropriate hues (thank you, noveltwholesale!), as well as some gently used glow-in-the-dark skeleton pajamas. Then I got to work on the rest.

I ended up making ponchos, tattered pants, and red sashes. I didn't use a pattern for the ponchos or sashes and just kind of winged it. For the pants, I used Kwik Sew pajama patterns, 3126 (toddler sizes; I made a T3) and 3604 (boys & girls sizes; I made a Medium).

Above is a picture of the green skeleton from the game next to Little Bear's rendition.

The ponchos are made of fleece, including the appliqued stripes. I decided on fleece because Halloween night around here is typically cold (and wet... but, as always, we are crossing our fingers for a dry evening!). The green poncho was a bit of a challenge, as there were angles involved. It made me glad that it was a small size as I could lay the whole thing out on the table.

The yellow poncho was much more straightforward. I think it turned out pretty darn close to the look of the in-game version, which you can see in the image above. Since the sombreros came with ball trim on them, I decided to add some to the ponchos as well, to help tie the look together.

My husband was concerned that the costumes be as "cosplay accurate" as possible. So I made the pants and sash. But I didn't have it in me to make shirts too... I mean, they'd just be completely covered up by the ponchos anyway, right? I feel a bit like a slacker, but really, the boys are both happy, and that's what really counts.

When they put on their costumes, they immediately got into character and were very excited to show off all of their skeleton moves.

What a pair!

Wishing you a safe and happy Halloween!!!

Halloween 2012

This year, both bears had opinions about what they wanted to be for Halloween.

Little Bear finally decided on a "scary dinosaur." As we happened to have a dragon costume on hand (in the right size, even!), and I didn't want to re-invent the wheel, we have Dragon 2.0 -- aka Scary Dinosaur!

Dinosaur ROAR!!!

Hopefully, I'll manage to get some better pictures of Little Bear as Scary Dinosaur today.

Meanwhile, Big Bear decided he wanted to be Perry the Platypus. I got to break out the sewing machine for this one!

I used Kwik Sew 2711 for the main suit, and then drafted my own tail, bill, and feet. I made a size Small, and shortened the legs by 1". The eyes are from Simplicity 3594 (the frog prince view). Because I had made the pattern before (Blue Kitty!), the main part went together both smoothly and quickly. The other parts took some time to figure out, but once I had a plan, they went together quickly (except for the tail... the quilting took a bit of time!).

Here he is with the actual Perry. I'm still a little amazed I was able to find the perfect color of fleece. Best of all, Big Bear LOVES it. Yay!!!

Tonight, we trick or treat! Woo!

Happy Halloween!

The Little Merboy

A very rare species, indeed...


Recently, Big Bear read the story of the Little Mermaid and watched the Disney movie and declared that was what he wanted to be for Halloween. Then one of his preschool buddies pointed out that mermaids are girls. Uh-oh. Big Bear was not happy to hear this. But he thought about it for a bit and decided he could be a mer-boy instead. Phew! Crisis averted... (well, other than the fact that then I actually had to figure out how to make a merboy costume...).


For the bottom half, I used McCall's 4964, a pattern for fleece pants that included side seams. I then drafted a fin shape to insert into the side seam. I used fleece for the pants and overlaid each piece with the fancy fish-scale looking fabric. The fins were made of felt overlaid with the same scale material. I was worried about the weight of the fins, so I added in the gathered tulle on the backside of each to help support them so they wouldn't just flip backward.


The shirt is from Burda 9537, a basic t-shirt design. I changed it up a little by adding a center back seam and seams along the top of each sleeve so that I could insert some fins. Again, I used the scale fabric overlaid onto felt and used gathered tulle to help support either side of each fin (and to help tie in with the look of the tail fin). I cut the shirt extra long in the torso and sleeves to allow me to cut a jagged edge (in lieu of hems).


And then we finished it all up with some fun merboy face stripes, a little bit of blue hairspray, and some shell necklaces.

Now Merboy is ready for some Halloween fun!

Fierce!

Oh, my...

Have you ever seen such cuteness ferocity???


Watch out! He's on the prowl...


For cookies!!! (Tigers love cookies, you know.)


The costume is from Kwik Sew 3099. I made a size small (12 months), and it fits pretty well on Little Bear (he's 21 pounds and about 31 inches tall... I probably could have shortened it a little, but it is fine when he is wearing shoes). The body is fleece and then I used "bunny fur" for the belly and ear contrasts. The paws are just white fleece with some black faux suede that I found in my stash. This is actually the second time I've used this pattern, so it went pretty smoothly (other than sewing the hood on inside-out... thank goodness for seam rippers!).

I'm so thrilled with how it turned out. Super cute, nice and toasty warm (perfect for chilly night of trick-or-treatin'), and he actually seems to enjoy wearing it. Yay!