Hallowe'en cookies!

Made some more Hallowe'en cookies, and thought I'd do a quick tutorial on the decorations.

I love the classic sugar cookie recipe from the Cake & Cooky Cookbook, brushed with milk and sprinkled with sugar or sprinkles. Generally, this means sugar or sprinkles all over the cookie sheet, cooked on, keeping me from lifting off the cookies without breaking them. So this time, I made stencils out of heavy paper, by tracing the cookie cutters and then cutting inside the lines (the idea being, if the stencil is slightly smaller than the cookie, there will be less spillover). After I had done a few, I realised at one point that folding up the edges of the stencil would result in even less spilling.

Then I made separate stencils for the Jack O'Lantern face and ghost eyes.

A slightly tedious process, but much less time than icing, and after the first sheet I had a pretty good assembly line going, doing the white sugar first, then the orange, then all the black (eyes, faces, cats) at once.

They look like more work than they are!

The Flash!

This is a lifetime first for me: I finished a Hallowe'en costume one full week before Hallowe'en!

I am frankly astounded, and at loose ends. But miracle of miracles, it is true. Despite having to re-do the leggings from scratch because they were too small (curse you Burda and the randomness of your seam allowances). The costume is basically a hoodie and leggings (Burda 9482), with a bit of felt decoration, appliquéd using the old classic zigzag wheel on the Supermatic. Before I started, I asked the kid if he'd possibly wear it to school or elsewhere after Hallowe'en was over (in which case, I'd use something that would hold up in the laundry better than felt). He said, "No." I guess he's too old for that kind of thing.

When I asked him to try it on for size, he said, "Hmm, I could wear this to school!" Sigh.

The boots are yellow felt, cut to fit over the kid's rainboots. There's an elastic strap that goes under the heel to hold them on (I hope).

The tricky part was making the wing/lightning thingies sticking out of his helmet and boots. I ended up using multiple layers of felt fused together with Wonder Web for stability, and zigzagged around the edges.

There was a lot of zigzagging with this costume. But it's done done done! A week in advance! I guess I can always kill time making more sugar cookies.