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!

Uncle Sam Trousers

Another outfit for dressing up, this time for the May Fayre at the kids school, they also have a parade up through the village to open it. The theme for my DS was "America", which I was not daunted by in the slightest as DD had also had to have an american dress up theme a few years ago so I could already dig out the t-shirt (yes, I did stick on the 50 stars!) and the crumpled hat that I made from felt. Didn't think he would want to wear a red and white stripey skirt so I rustled up a pair of trousers.

Given my dislike for cutting and piecing patterns I thought it would be easiest to use an existing pair of trousers as the pattern as I knew they fitted. So after a bit of stretching and drawing I had cut out the pieces and then got to use my new toy - MY OVERLOCKER!! This humble piece of equipment is supposed to revolutionise my sewing, or that is how I sold it to my other half when convincing him of the need for one.  I was impressed with the professional finish it gave the clothes and the speed at which it could do alterations - just need to make sure that I don't over adjust as it cuts as it goes so there is no turning back once done.

As with all my dressing up outfits I did make the trousers slightly on the large side in case they were needed again in the future. Overall I was happy with the outfit.

World book day - Mr. Bump and Coraline

Another year and another set of costumes, except this year I have two to make. Thankfully my youngest was a simple idea - Mr Bump. And daughter wanted to go as Coraline (yes, it is a book and not just a movie, but no, she has not read the book).

Coraline doll

I made this up as I went along, not following a pattern but just making sure that I cut the fabric in batches so the pieces matched up and were equal size.  The good thing about projects like this is that I can use up lots of scraps so didn't need to purchase any additional things.  I had been keeping my husbands old shirts in my scrap pile for a while which came in handy for both the legs of the doll (black and white tights) and the blue skirt.

I made sure to sew the button eyes and hair on the doll prior to completely stitching together and stuffing to make it a little easier. Although sewing the head on was a little tricky and you will notice from my first attempt I managed to sew it one backwards!

The skirt and top were fairly simple to put together but the mac did take a while and playing with paper to work out exactly how it would piece.

Anyway the finished item is below:

 Mr. Bump

I was going to make the shape out of 6 eggish shaped pieces but after cutting the first 4 decided it was going to be plenty big enough

I used a couple of rings of boning round the centre to help it stick out whilst also being flexible, the outfit had to be worn all day at school so I didn't want to use a hoop. I also got away with using a zipper foot to stitch the boning directly onto the fabric (blue fleece) so this saved time with additional pockets but was a bit hard due to the circular shape being created.

More old shirts were used to create mr bumps bandages and then I added a rolled hem on the neck line and threaded some ribbon through for a simple draw string opening.

When it came to the face I cheated...it was now 10.00pm the night before world book day and the pressure was on so I cut up some felt and stuck it with fabric glue.  Not sure if it was the fabricor the glue but it wasn't taking too well so I left it with pins in over night.

I didn't make arms or legs for this outfit as my son's school jumper was the right shade of blue (or close enough!) and he had a pair of trousers to match as well. I just cut slits for the arms to come out - no need to hem with the fabric.

So here is the finished article being modeled for you by my boy :)