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!

Children's bum bag, fanny pack or whatever you would like to call it!

This was a weekend sewing project following notification from my son's school that all that children who need certain medicines (inhalers or insulin) should keep it on them at all times and the suggestion was a bum bag.  In order to make it more appealing to wear I took my son to my favourite fabric store, Hometown in Rochester, to allow him to pick out his fabric and with a little guidance to steer away from large prints and light prints he settled on the robots, Makower Fabrics Robots Dark Little Monsters Collection.

The pattern I used was one I found on pinterest from daisyjanie below:

http://daisyjanie.typepad.com/daisyjanie/2011/06/hip-pouch-sew-along-supplies-list.html

The things I would note about this pattern:

1) It does mention using canvas as the lining fabric, I didn't have any so used cotton with interfacing on my lining.

2) It is quite a small bag, I have included a photo with my rotary cutter on it so you can get an idea of size. For me it was nice that it wasn't too big for my son, being only 6 but it only just fitted the medication he needed.

I used some polka dot lining from my stash that my mother-in-law had got from India.

DaisyJanie had included some printable pattern pieces which were very helpful to use.

The pattern gives the option of using either a webbing waist band or making it out of the fabric, I chose to use the fabric made one - hopefully it will withstand the daily use of my son.

Despite my best efforts to get the robots to stand the correct way up on the waist band I lined them up on the backing fabric when attaching them forgetting that I should have really lined them up with the front panel! Sadly I only realised this late in the day when I had lost the will to unpick.

However I did need to unpick parts later as you can see when layering up the pouch to stitch it all together I had forgotten to tuck the straps inside first. Very annoying but I was on a mission to complete it.

Daisy Janie gave thorough instructions with lots of photos, I would be willing to follow another pattern again.

It would be good to see if the pattern could be enlarged easily as I do feel this could be slightly too small for general adult usage.

Anyway, take a look at the finished article below, I hope you like it :)