World Book Day 2015 - Gingerbread man and Peter Pan

This year the school decided that they wanted to stick to a theme of fairy tales for world book day, I was rather hoping my youngest would like the gingerbread man idea but no, he is not big on dressing up but I was glad my daughter loved the suggestion.

Gingerbread man

I attempted to make the rough pattern/sizing by having my daughter lie on a long rolled out piece of paper but drawing round her was tricky and it wasn't that successful, although I did refer to it occasionally for rough measurements when she was in bed.

 Given she had to wear the outfit all day at school  I wanted to make it easy for her to work so parts of the outfit were detachable - the head was attached with velcro and the hands were a basic mitten shape that I made a little long so that they didn't have to join the sleeve.

The fabric was thin fleece which gave some texture to the outfit and didn't fray.  I couldn't believe it when I found some large ric rac in Hometown in Rochester, it was perfect for the embellishments. My daughter wanted the look of it to be similar to the gingerbread man in Shrek so we roughly followed the colours for the face. The facial features were made from felt with the mouth aligned with her eyes for her to see through. I did cover the mouth opening with some pink netting to keep as much of her hidden as possible.

The head also had a large cardboard cut out inside to get it to stay up, I had started by putting boning round the outside but this wasn't sufficient.

There were some last minute messy alterations to the arms so that she could move freely and that was it.  It wasn't the neatest of sewing but it was effective.

Peter Pan

This outfit was so simple to make - but I did ensure I made it before the gingerbread man as I could see myself not getting round to it with all the sewing on the other outfit. The top was a basic t shirt shape, loose fitting with a belt round it to hitch it up, trousers I sort of made the pattern up using another pair of his but I didn't make the seat long enough so they did slip a bit when he sat down.  The hat was trial and error!

The descriptions for both outfits are not great, when I sew for costumes I know that I am never going to be making the same thing again so don't keep track of what I do, in addition I am always running late getting them done so barely stop for photos either!