One day to go

Aaaahhhhh!!

Home stretch. Getting close. Except the cat keeps stealing stuff like buttons and thread.

But I am pleased to say the shoes are done. Thought they would be easier, starting with the Chinatown cotton Mary Jane slippers I wore throughout highschool, but you can't get them anymore, only slip-ons. I remembered this as soon as I saw them--last time I thought I'd buy those slippers they were nowhere to be found. I asked the shopkeeper who confirmed it's been years since they were available. 

So, slipper conversion as well as applique. 

At least handsewing is portable--took this with me to Sunday service!

Still plugging away as the deadline looms

So this is basically my only plan for the weekend—sewing, sewing, and more sewing.

Here's what I've done so far:

• Base dress (done)
• Bloomers (done)
• Ribbon tie with insignia (done)
• Wig (purchased)
• Shoes (purchased)

Still to do:

• Assemble apron with gold trim (augh)
• Sleeves (more gold trim augh)
• Collar/Dickie (had hoped to start with a thrift store shirt but didn't find a suitable one)
• Gold trim on shoes (augh)
• Bowtie (do I have one somewhere?)
• Bunny tail (purchase)
• Style wig

What am I forgetting...

Anyway this gold fabric is awful. Slippery, stretchy, even when I stabilize it with fusible interfacing it won't stay fused. I tried using a hotter iron, up to the point of starting to get a scorched plastic smell, but even though it seems attached, it comes loose after a few minutes if you try to cut or sew. Grr. I'm going to experiment on a scrap with spray starch, but I see a lot of basting in my future. 

Looks nice though!

When you can't find what you want, make what you want

A big part of the Saber Astolfo costume is the gold trim. I initially imagined using braid or similar, but couldn't find anything that was just exactly right. And trying to work out how much I'd need to follow the zig-zaggy crenellated pattern was requiring too much thought. Then I saw this fabric: 

Liquid gold! I got some fusible interfacing to make it less liquid where needed (although I'm afraid I'll just melt it) so I can cut out the various trims and decorations. Meanwhile I started with the sleeve trims:

Red ribbon edged with gold. The one on the right shows the bits before I put them together. 

And the final product:

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.

busy! busy! busy!

this weekend i...

finished the greninja ex pokemon costume
carved a pumpkin
baked cookies
baked squares (why yes, we are having a bake sale tomorrow! tonight i am baking bbq pork buns)
misc other things like sunday service and swimming classes for the kid and and and...

this photo is pretty terrible (my camera is pretty terrible!) but it's all i've got until we find some daylight time for a re-take!

also took some photos during the sewing-of, which i will post eventually, for anyone who is looking for pokemon costume tips and tricks.

what i did on my summer vacation day six: afloat!

on saturday we were threatened with rain, so decided to try to get as much done as possible on the raft before the deluge, and then go in to the fair in the late afternoon after the skies cleared.

there was a lot of hammering to do...

but fortunately i had help! my strong kid is pretty proficient with a hammer.

one of the things on the list for this day was to buy chain for the anchors. i had looked at chain on previous shopping trips, but wondered - how much to get? prices ranged from 69¢ to $2.29 a foot, so if i bought 100 feet of chain, that could add up to a lot of money. so, i measured out 50 feet of rope, brought a ball of yarn with a sinker tied on one end, and swam out to see how deep it was.

holding on to the length of rope (to measure distance) and ball of yarn (to measure depth) was a bit futzy, and i instinctively reached for the ground with my foot.

guess what? i touched bottom.

lake depth 50 feet from shore: about five feet. i don't know why in the world i thought it might be deep enough to require a hundred feet of chain, but i am very glad i measured before buying! i ended up getting two 10-foot lengths - one to connect the anchors, one to loop through it and connect to opposite sides of the raft. this way, the chains stay well under the raft, so no worries about banging one's feet in the water.

then it was off to the fenelon fair to see how we had done, eat mini doughnuts, and send the kid on some rides.

there were ribbons!

the ghostbusters costume won a $25 fabricland gift certficate! just in time for me to start this year's hallowe'en costume!

and, who'da thunk? my sorry little cukes took first place!

helps that no one else entered pickling cucumbers. whew.

we topped the evening off with a final open-fire dinner (sausage and corn), and a trip to the demolition derby. not my usual fare, but we had loads of fun - and the fair at night feels much more exciting!

the incredible hulk: part 2

hallowe'en is over! now we are all about ready to throw up from eating too much candy!

anyway, i finished off the hulk costume today: sewed up the green outer layer, inserted the muscled under layer, and quilted the two together.

here's a close-up of the pecs and abs. i used embroidery floss to do a bit of hand quilting to make the muscles really pop.

and a close up of the shorts. i started with a basic pyjama bottom pattern, and basically made two identical pairs of shorts, zig-zagged them together at the bottom, and then turned rightside out to get a neat and tidy torn/shredded look.

he is already talking about wearing them as shorts next summer!

he was thrilled with the costume over all, and started his hulky poses as soon as he tried it on.

must find a photo with the make-up!

meanwhile, i finished my annis shawl and am currently blocking!

it used exactly one half (i weighed) of a skein of wollemeise. which means i need to find a project for the other half. this was supposed to be a stashbuster, dammit!

the incredible hulk: part 1

who doesn't love ang lee, director of such thoughtful films as the wedding banquet, pushing hands, the ice storm, and... hulk?

you can guess which film inspired the kid's choice for hallowe'en costume this year.

it's tempting to just feed the kid steroids and paint him green. tempting, and perhaps illegal. so instead, i decided to start with some kind of basic bodysuit, build a physique on top soft-sculpture style, and upholster it with green fabric.

here's the base i chose: classic stanfield pyjamas. "these look like underwear," complained the kid (he's used to tailored jim jams).

i made him put them on and sketched roughly where the muscles should go. sort of like a plastic surgeon might.

now i'm in the process of bulking him up. here i've got the biceps, pecs, and abs basted in place.

you can see a bit of the green fabric in that shot, too. once i get some shoulder padding in place, i can start putting it together and see how it looks!

ghostbusters costume: elbow pads and belt

well i got all these pots ready and scheduled over the weekend, but this one was unfinished. i figured i'd have had time to finish the items & photogrpah them by now.

but!

instead, i was in hospital for a few days with appendicitis. booo.

i did manage to finish the elbow pads in the er waiting room, actually, but haven't photographed them (and am not entirely sure where they are... trunk of the car maybe?)

anyway my starting point was a size massive polo shirt in a shade of grey i thought would work:

i cut the pieces out from the back of the shirt and sleeves. amazing how much shirt is left! i even used some of it for stuffing the elbow pads.

the good news is, the saturday morning event that kiddo was going to wear it to? cancelled. and sunday morning is probably cancelled, too, only because i can't drive while looped. so, the deadline has returned to hallowe'en proper.

three cheers for extra time!

ghostbusters costume: proton pack! part 1

step one is the plans. i started by looking at a lot of pictures of proton packs, as well as some plans from gbfans. i printed out one of their pdfs, and scribbled a few notes on it for clarity (because i am not accustomed to looking at proton pack plans, and i couldn't tell what was what).

then i said to myself, how can i make this a functional backpack? what's crucial? what can be changed, but still leave it looking like a proton pack?

and then i drew up some more plans.

it's basically a sewing pattern at this point. or, an idea for one.

next, i took my basic pattern and traced/sketched on what it might look like if i "decorated" it like a proton pack, basically adding the remaining elements as appliques.

the heavy outline shows "structural" seams. the lighter outlines indicate embellishments.

then, i got my materials. i had bought a metre of black poly twill for this, but in my closet i had the piece de resistance: a broken backpack.

the thing about kids and backpacks is, kids are small. backpacks are big. i've seen kids who practically need to walk tiptoe to keep their backpacks off the ground. so when the kiddo was starting jk, tg got him an appropriately kid-sized backpack.

except, you couldn't fit much of anything inside. it was stuffed to the gills and beyond, and it wasn't long before it was torn and all the zippers broken. unusable.

but, the straps will work for me nicely. lots of usable stuff here. the inner pocket for example; will be easy to transfer that straight over.

so, i dismantled it.

there are lots of useful bits and bobs on this thing, including the main fabric itself - it's sort of rubberized, i guess to make it waterproofish, but the rubbery side is kind of neat. i decided to use both sides of the fabric in the embellishments, just to have a variety of textures.

then the fun part.

using my sketches as a guide, i started placing and cutting shapes and stuff, moving bits around to get a feel for how it all will look.

i think it's gonna look awesome.

i've got some ideas in store for the cables and whatnot, too. i just wish the led spoke lights i planned to use for the back round thing weren't sold out! major sighs.

ghostbusters costume: the hose connector thing

after much futzing about and rooting through old stuff (i have too much stuff!) i came across a couple of pieces of "elephant skin" lino for doing linocut prints. i bought this stuff ten years ago or possibly more. maybe someday, i will do the linocuts. meanwhile, it's a great colour and carvable. so, i decided to see what i could do to fashion a hose connector thing out of it.

that's one of these, the bit that connects the hose to the left thigh of the flightsuit.

i had some aquarium hose, and a thing that it fit onto, to use as a starting point.

i cut the thing-it-fit-onto - some sort of aquarium filter piece thing (again, we have too much stuff!) down to size, leaving the "flare" so i could securely attach it into the hose connector thing.

since the lino is not terribly thick, i had to glue bits together to get tomething close to what i wanted. the leg hose connector itself is made of stacked rings, glued together with some all-purpose adhesive i found in my toolbox.

i glued together the two large base pieces and the two smaller nozzle pieces separately, so i could mess around with the fit of everything, and also to make it easier to sand the edges, which were pretty uneven.

i clamped the whole lot together while the glue dried.

then, slip the hose through, and voila! ready to be sewn onto the leg of the flightsuit.