CHRISTEPHI

My first choice for a costume for Miss M would have been Merida, the new Disney princess from Brave. I want to make her gorgeous dark green dress!  Alas, Miss M wanted to be Rapunzel, so pink and purple it had to be.  And once she had decided on Rapunzel, it was only natural her little brother wanted to be Flynn Rider (a.k.a. Eugene Fitzherbert). I picked up the Rapunzel pattern ( Simplicity 2065 ) when it was on sale for 99 cents.  I've had enough experience with Simplicity patterns to expect them to run insanely wide, so although my daughter wears size 6 in ready-to-wear clothes, I made her a size 4 in width (and a 6 in bodice length, but 4 in skirt length).  I lengthened the bodice for two reasons: 1) the dress in the movie is longer waisted and 2) it means she'll be able to wear it longer!  Even so, it's a wee big big around on her.  Room to grow! I found the directions to be sparse and sometimes just plain strange.  A fully lined bodice...

KCWC Day 6 found me deviating from the "rules" a little.  Instead of sewing kids clothing , I finished up a kids toy .  I started the mattresses for this Princess and the Pea a while back, but hadn't gotten around to finishing them, or sewing the princess herself.  With a little friend's fourth birthday right around the corner, I figured I'd better hurry up! Little Guy came along just as I was about to stuff the princess and wanted to help.  I put a small pouch of zinc coated BBs in the bottom of her to counterbalance her heavy head!  Then we filled her with fluff. "Winnie the Pooh has fluff!" said the little mister.  "But not me. I'm full of bones!" Her hair is wool suiting (washed and dried so as to be thick and wooly), her face is tea-dyed kitchen toweling, and her dress is a piece of cherry blossom quilting cotton I bought back when Miss M was a newborn!  I embroidered her eyes and mouth and used a stiff paint brush to brush...

Belle is my favorite of all the Disney princesses.  (I love this analysis of Belle's character!)  So when a lady from church asked me to make her daughter a Belle dress for her 4th birthday and Halloween, I was happy to oblige! I used Simplicity 4764 , view G (with modifications) in size 5 length and size 4 width. The bodice was constructed of 2 layers: outer of sparkly satin and lined with 100% cotton muslin.  I used some corded trim as piping around the neckline. The skirt was constructed of 4 layers: Lining of bleached cotton muslin Two tiers of mesh netting sewn to the cotton lining and then overlayed by mesh cut using the skirt pattern pieces. Underskirt of yellow taffeta. Overskirt of yellow sparkly satin.  I cut the overskirt 6 inches longer than the underskirt and used 16 inch pieces of quarter inch elastic to shir the full length of the overskirt "Belle style." I really enjoyed making it and it turned out even better than I expected! ...

Toy Story 3 is very popular in our house. In fact, during the day on the weekdays it's on more often than not.  Little Guy will sit still and watch it long enough to fall asleep (which is why I put it on at naptime so often!).  He loves Buzz, in fact, he calls the whole movie "Buzz," but Miss M loves Jessie.  Wow, does she ever love Jessie! When her grandma and auntie got tickets to go to Toy Story 3 on Ice this weekend, Miss M was over the moon!  She has a Jessie Halloween costume, but it's nothing more than a one-piece printed pajama-like suit and she's already outgrowing it.  She's been asking for a "real" Jessie suit and this seemed like the perfect excuse to sew her one! I used materials I had on hand -- white cotton toweling, yellow quilting cotton, red piping (vintage), red ribbon, and a bit of white felt. Only the buttons were purchased specifically for this purpose.  I used Ottobre 6/2007 #19, the "Ollie" shirt.  The front...

The past two nights we journeyed back in time to Bethlehem.  I played Mary the mother of Jesus,  Hubby dressed as Joseph, and Miss M was a mostly-well-behaved angel.  Our new little man was, of course, the star as he played Baby Jesus.  It was a big hit with the children visitors to have a real baby Jesus! One little boy brought the flute he made inside the "market" back out and asked if he could play a song for Jesus.  Who could resist such a request?! My little angel procured her own fan club over the course of the two evenings. She did all the activities at least three times and received special treatment from all the "shop keepers."  It was good for her ego since she saw her brother getting so much attention.   She has no modesty whatsoever (which I'm not concerned about at this age) and when people told her she was beautiful angel, she simply replied, "Yeah, I am!"   It was a once in a lifetime opportunity...the...

I had most of Miss M's Halloween costume done a while back...just never got around to taking pictures of it until now.  It's based loosely on McCall's 5732 , but I really only used the pattern for the vest...and even then I modified it.   For the shirt I used an Ottobre raglan pattern (I'm not even sure which one), but added width so it'd be a bit fuller.  I made it out of light green silk.  The vest as made of darker green twill and lined with brown flannel for warmth.  I patchworked together a bunch of faux suede pieces of various shades of brown for the pants and kind of made up the pattern as I went...based on the McCall's pattern style, but not using their pattern pieces and making it a separate rather than a one-piece with the top.  I used elastic in the legs and a drawstring at the waist so she can keep wearing it as dress-up clothes for a while.  I completely made up the pattern for the wings and they turned out amazingly like wh...

After going through two prototypes ( here and here ), Miss M's Cinderella dress is finished!  Her birthday isn't until mid November, but I really wanted to have it done as soon as possible since we don't know when this baby will decide to arrive.  If he's on the same schedule Miss M was on, it could be as early as next week!  (And as long as he's healthy like she was, I wouldn't mind a bit!) I wasn't originally going to make the dress lace up in back, but I'm too cheap to use a zipper.  A zipper = $4 or so and you can buy a whole spool of ribbon for $0.50!  Besides, I'm going to use some scraps of the blue satin to make a cord for it...and this way it'll fit her longer because even when she's a little too big around for the dress, I can just tie the laces a little looser et voila ! The other change I made to the pattern, besides getting the fit of the bodice right, was to add an underskirt or crinoline of bleached muslin and tulle ...

My first Cinderella dress prototype was a big hit with Miss M, but unfortunately it didn't fit her properly.  I scrounged up some more fabric scraps my mom gave me a while back and came up with a second prototype.  This one fits much better!  I also took the time to do a few details that came to me a bit late in the making of prototype #1, namely tucks in the skirt, eyelet lace peeking out from the hemline and echoed at the neckline, and a lace-up back.  (I do need to get a more appropriate bit of ribbon since this sheer stuff is a little too fragile for an energetic toddler.) Making these is dangerously fun!  I have a feeling there will be more incarnations in the future.  Why, oh why does everyone I know have boys instead of girls!?  How many princess dresses can one little girl handle anyway? Oh, and yes, it was raining when I took the pictures...and the cement was quite chilly for bare feet!  But Miss M thought it was the ...

Miss M has been promised a Cinderella dress for her birthday.  Knowing that McCall's and Simplicity patterns tend to run super wide for my slim daughter, I decided to do some pre-measuring and a prototype before cutting into my "good" fabric.  As suspected, it came out wide...but it definitely passes the 2-almost-3-year-old test.  She declared quite vehemently, "I'm going to keep wearing it. It's clothes."  (Can you tell she is frequently told to put "clothes" on and not stay in her pajamas all day?)  I haven't even hemmed it yet...and it's too wide so the sleeves slip down her shoulders giving it a decidedly naughty look -- not the look I'm going for on my toddler!  But, for this evening, she's a happy peasant-princess. Miss M loves to dress up.  Today she told me she wanted to be "a super" with a cape and a mask.  She frequently plays as a magician, a princess, a butterfly, a bird, or a ballerina.  That...