Rain Cloud Costume

With all the craziness of moving and remodeling I really wanted to buy Emmett's costume this year. But I couldn't find anything that I liked. With a little pinteresting I found this adorable rain cloud costume and it just kept sticking in my head and I started comparing every other costume I found to it. So I decided that perhaps this was the winner. Plus the most important thing is that I already had everything on hand! Which made it meant to be. So excited.

I used freezer paper stenciling to make the rain drops on the pants. The Bubb had blue sweatpants which are pretty much on the verge of being too small for him so I didn't mind reusing them for another purpose.

Then for the cloud I used white flannel (front) and white kona (back). I had leftover gray bias tape (score!) and used that for the shoulders. I sandwiched it between the two front layers so it would look cleaner and then after testing it out on the bubb, I sewed the shoulder straps to the back cloud. Probably could have made it more elegant looking, but time was not on my side. I filled the middle with polyfil and decided that it stayed in place quite nicely and then just sewed up the holes on the machine (could have hand stitched but again didn't have time)

The Bubb LOVE LOVE LOVES his rain boots, so that was a must. So here he is our little rain cloud. And I must say he is such a cutie! and he was way more excited about the costume than I had anticipated.

He also is very into pumpkins this year and likes to lift them and carry them around. We have 3 out front and then two in the backyard so that we can see them, as we don't often go out the front door. We got a large orange one and a really ugly black one. Just a good combo that makes me smile when I walk by.

Hope everyone has a candy filled and safe halloween :)

Shark Attack

The Bubb is going to be a shark for Halloween this year, although the preview was sorta a giveaway. Please note that he was "supposed" to be walking or at least standing on his own at this point, which would have made this costume fantastic, but alas he is still super cute as a crawling baby shark.

My hope was that he would be walking enough so that we could go to one or two houses get some candy (for mom and dad), take some pictures and then be done. But I don't think that is going to work out this year.

So annoyed that we keep calling out his name and trying to get him to look at the camera, such a good sport though! and after playing shark we did what he really wanted - to play in the water and sand. He LOVED getting his toes wet, and yes that is one very full diaper of sand and beach water :) 

Superhero Cape

The final present is finished at last. Yeah for not being up 'till the wee hours of the morning Christmas Eve. And what is the final present you ask, a superhero cape! Yeah for boy ideas, although I am pretty sure that I had a cape fashioned out of a few yards of fabric when I was in my She-Ra phase way back in the day.

So as you can probably tell by the "J" superman initial that this cape is for Jack.  It was pretty easy to make after I got my head around how I was going to assemble it. My favorite part of the whole thing, silly as it is, was making the fabric gather. It was so neat how it started to bunch as I sewed along, okay I won't digress about it but it made my night, obviously there isn't too much excitement in my life! Ha! I used velcro to have the cape stay on because ties just didn't seem right to me and I really didn't want to fight with the snap press that I have.

In addition I also made a little mask. I used eyelets for the elastic to go through and it is pretty adjustable as I am not sure how big his head is, so hopefully it will fit! It is too small for Evan and just a tiny too big for the Bubb, so that must be Jack size! I can't wait for him to see it, I hope he likes it!

A Tutu For Maddie

 

What does every girl need to complete her wardrobe? A pink tutu.

During my many meanderings on etsy, I've often come across tutus and thought that they would be perfect for Maddie. And after talking with Christie (her mom) we decided that she needed one. So after

5000 times of asking myself why I just didn't do the simple tie the tulle onto the elastic tutu,
32 yards of tulle,
26 inches of ribbon,
17 inches of elastic,
2 machine jams,
and 1 very patient husband

later Maddie has her very own pink tutu. I really hope she likes it but I'll have to wait 'till Christmas to find out.

For those interested in the construction portion. I cut the 32 yards of tulle into 24x6 inch strips. I then folded those pieces in half to make 12x6 inch pieces and gathered them at a corner. From there I took elastic string and proceeded to square knot the string while inserting the gathered inch or so of the tulle corner inbetween each square knot segment to get something that looks like the picture below.

So when finished knotting all the tulle, I ended up with this.

From here it got really tricky and this is probably why no one makes tutus this way, but instead just ties the tulle onto elastic. But I didn't want this tutu to look like that. So what I did was sew 26" of 4" wide ribbon together to make a band. Then I basted the ribbon onto the tulle (this was the part that made making the tutu possible). From there I sewed the ribbon onto the tulle (I ended up using about 20 hairbands to try to keep the tulle under control while sewing) while leaving an opening for the 1" elastic. I then inserted the elastic and sewed up the seam. I wanted to make sure the elastic would work so we had to try it on!

I can't wait for her to see it!