Halloween! Bat in Her Hair

My little vampire had a bat in her hair.

Can you see it? A little hard against the dark hair, huh?

A quick, cute and simple tutorial from Cut Out and Keep!

Cute Bat In Your Hair
The bat was a little floppy because I used knit fabric to construct the bat, but look how cute a bat made with leather is!
Other ideas include construction paper glued to bobby pins. You would also use stiff ribbon to form the bat.

Making the Hermione (or any other) Wand

I wanted to quickly show you how I made a replica of the Hermione Wand.

This is how the wand is supposed to look like:

And this is the replica that I made.

It is not quite as straight and quite a bit darker (I did not feel like repainting it), but my daughter Would Not Care. She will be absolutely thrilled with it, I'm sure.

It did not really take that long to make, so I thought I'll share it with you

Start by shaving down a stick. My husband picked up a couple of straight-ish sticks on one of his walks. He spent a few minutes shaving off the bark and sanding the it smooth.

I used a pencil to draw a rough outline of the pattern of the vine and then used hot glue to create the vines of the wand. 

Hot glue was certainly not an original idea of mine, but it was something suggested to me by my friend, and when I did a quick search online, it seems as though others have been using it for the same purpose.

Piping hot glue is very much like piping icing, and thus, it is best to practice a little on a piece of scrap paper. The thing about the Hermione wand is that since it is vines and leaves, so the piping doesn't have to be perfect:

The more imperfect the application of the hot glue, the more organic my vine looked.

After adding the vines, I went back and added leaves and the stems. In the photo above, you'll notice that I did flowers instead of leaves. This was because it is the second wand that I made and it's for my little daughter who also wanted a wand, but not exactly the same as the Hermione wand.

After the hot glue has dried, which doesn't take very long, I carefully removed all the little strings that hotglue leaves behind. They using some brown acrylic paint, I painted over wood and glue. Once dried, I went back and painted the vines a slightly lighter colour to make it pop, but I think I wouldn't even have had to do that.

So, these are the two wands I made. I did give them both a light sheen of clear gloss to protect the paint.

I really did not take me very long to make these wands, and as long as you are not planning to make very precise patterns, this is an excellent way to make a wand with protruding designs.

Scarves, scarves, scarves

I've been on a little bit of fabric recycling kick lately. Being rather slow in the game, I've recently discovered that scarves not only keep my neck nice and warm, it can also spruce up an outfit quite nicely.

Just in the past couple of days, I've made 3 scarves from recycled fabric. They were quick to construct, fun to make and best of all, extremely useful.

Here's the first one that I made out of an old striped sweater:

I cut the sweater in to 7" vertical strips and sewed them together to create a long scarf. Then, I made a tube out to the scarf by sewing right sides together on the long edge and flipping the tube out. To create ruffles, I treaded elastic through the tube and sewed the elastic on while stretching the elastic.


Next I was inspired by this wonderful tutorial by Put Up Your Dukes to make the second scarf.

Instead of 2 t-shirts, I used 3, as I need more length to the scarf. The end effect was still pretty.



Finally, I made a t-shirt necklace scarf! I always wanted to do this, but I knew that I had to make it a thick scarf. This is because I didn't just want to fabric necklace, but I wanted a warm scarf! I need it to be utilitarian.

I don't know when I first saw this tutorial, and I wish I could credit it properly. Who came up with it first, I wonder? If you know, please let me know! But here's my amateur attempt to show you what I did:

This scarf was made using 2 t-shirts. I cut the t-shirts into 1/2" strips horizontally to create loops. Those loops were stretchhhhhed in order to created the rolled effect. I then sewed bands to keep the loops and place and also to camouflage seams of the loops as I did not use seamless t-shirts. You could easily have tied the loops together with another piece of jersey, though.

Love them all! :)

Recycle T-Shirts into Color Block Dress

I stumbled upon this pretty dress on pinterest and I absolutely love the colour block look.

Of course, the dress is stretch silk and costs well over $300 (you can find the dress here). I decide to make a recycled t-shirt version of my favourite dress using the color blocking idea.

I decided to document how I made the dress so that I can share it with you. It's been a while since I've done this, hasn't it?

Anyway, this is my favourite dress that I decided to base my dress on:

I have quite a few of my husband's old t-shirts that I can't really donate because of underarm stains caused by antit-perspirant. It's such a shame because the rest of the t-shirts are in such good condition.

So here's how I did it:

1) Fold t-shirt down the middle and flatten it as best as you can. Do the same thing with the original dress and place it on the t-shirt 

2) Use disappearing ink to carefully trace the dress bodice pattern directly onto the t-shirt. Notice I used the pin to mark on the dress, so that I know where the bodice ends.

3) This is how the pattern should look like. (Sorry about my ugly red dashed lines, I wanted to make it easier for you to see)

4) You'll end up with two pieces, the front and the back bodice. However, you'll still need to lower the neckline for the front bodice, as shown below:

5) Repeat for the middle block of the dress. The pin that you placed earlier will help you determine where the top of the block starts. Remember to mark the bottom of the block on your dress as well.

6) For the bottom block, I decided to keep the bottom hem of the t-shirt intact so that I don't have to hem the dress:

7) Repeat the same procedure for the bottom block. Notice I did not have quite enough fabric, but decided to go ahead anyway)

8) The 3 blocks laid out. You should have two of these, front and back.

9) You can go ahead and sew this, and make a sleeveless dress. You can leave the edges of the sleeves and neckline raw. Since jersey fabric doesn't fray, it will be fine. I decided to make sleeves for the dress using leftover scrap from the t-shirts.

Be sure to copy the arm-hole directly from the bodice by laying it on directly on the t-shirt. 

10) With the right sides together, sew the block pieces together. I used a serger, but you can use zig-zag stitch. Here's a really good video resource you can check out to help you sew knits without a serger.
You should end up with two pieces like this:

Place these two pieces right sides together, sew the shoulders, and then the sides.

11) Here's how it looks like. This is a good time to try out the dress.

12) To attach the sleeves, pin right sides together and sew.

13) To finish the collar, I decided to reuse the ribbing from one of the t-shirts. Cut out the ribbing and pin right sides together and sew. I was lucky enough the the ribbing fit the neckline perfectly, but you may have to adjust a little.

And you're done! (In my case, I had to iron the creases on the dress to make it presentable, but that was pretty much it)

Would you believe that I seem to have misplaced my tripod? It has been such a long time since I've taken self-portraits.

I did my best, with the help of mirrors and such.

The Handmade Hermione Costume

Why, Hello, from a bad, bad blogger who has ignored her poor blog for the past month.

I've been swamped doing lots of other things, but that's really no excuse :)

I haven't really been able to do much sewing for myself, but I've been diligently preparing for Halloween. This year, my kids are more excited than ever about Halloween. Stores started putting up Halloween costumes and decorations a whole month ahead. While this seem extreme to me, as someone who makes Halloween costumes for the entire family, I'm actually grateful for this. My kids decided very early on as to what they are going to be for Halloween, and this gave me a lot of time to prepare.

So this year my 7yr old has decreed that she shall be Hermione from Harry Potter

A girl who is tough, smart and confident. A girl who makes it cool to be intelligent? 

Oh, yes! You can be Hermione, my dear girl.

So here's what we have so far:

The robe, I cobbled together from an old black cape. It's actually fabric of quite good quality. It's thick and slightly stretchy, so it should work really well. I actually bought the patch from a vendor on eBay, butI think it was quite the worthwhile purchase, as it lends the robe it's authenticity. 

The maroon lining of the hood was made from the remnants of the tie.

Talking about the tie, I really enjoyed making it.The tie was made using the tutorial by purlbee.

Can I just say what an awesome tutorial that was? 

Oops, tie is a little crumpled because we've been playing with it:

The tie is made with maroon cotton, and I painted the stripes using yellow acrylic paint. See the back? Haha..... I was too lazy to finish it up at the back, but I think it will still work.

We still need a wand and an old book, but I think we'll be able to conjure those up :)

I'll show you my younger daughter's costume next post!