Another Speed Sewing Saturday...

8 days before a "Mike the Knight" birthday party we get an invitation with the tag line Fancy Dress to Impress! My daughter didn’t not want to go as a knight or a Viking so we loosely settled on a Medieval Princess.

The next day in town I striked it lucky in the local Cancer Research Charity shop, where there was a beautiful Jayne Copeland dress - it needed a little repair - but was a bargin at £4. That was most of the costume sorted, all I would need to do would be to make a cape, and a head dress - job done!

To cut a long story short - by the Saturday morning the cape was mostly made. In the remaining 3 hours I had to finish the cape with brooch, make the headdress and make the card... all this after being up most of the night with a 4 year old with a fever!

The headdress took about 1 hour (with interruptions!)

This is how I made it...

• Take a wire coat hanger and remove the hook part.
• Bend it round into a hoop - a good loose fit as it will be padded out.
• Secure and cover all the wire in tape - I used gaffa tape.
• Wrap scrap cotton fabric around the hoop to pad out the head dress - I used 4 sleeves off my husbands old work shirts. The cuffs were removed and the sleeves cut into approximate 5cm strips.
• Cut strips out the cover fabric - I cut x2 10cm strips of the unused cloak fabric (the fabric was ~140cm wide).
• Turn and press a 2cm hem along one edge of each piece.
• Wrap the pressed fabric around the loop making sure that it is the pressed neaten edge showing.
• On the inside of the hoop hand stitch the edges to stop the fabric from moving and stitch the ends securely.
• Wrap the finished hoop in a contrasting ribbon - I used ~2m of 2.5cm wide gold organza ribbon knotting it at the back.
• On the inside of the hoop hand stitch the ribbon to stop it moving (I didn’t have time for this step and the ribbon had moved by the end of the party!)
• Add some netting decoration - I cut a 50cm piece of gold glitter netting - gathered it up by hand and secured it with the ribbon at the back of the head dress.

The brooch took about 20 minutes - but needed another 40 to dry.

 

This is how I made it...

• Cut 2 circles out of card - I used cereal boxes and the 2nd smallest Eyelet Circles Die (Spellbinders Nestabilities range)
• Coat each circle with gold embossing powder and heat - I used Papermania gold embossing powder (but this comes out quite dull and has tarnished on cards made in the past).
• Coat each circle with clear embossing powder for an extra glossy finish - I used Stampendous clear embossing powder.
• Glue both circles together - off setting the eyelet holes.
• Punch a hole in the centre and add a "glamorous" jewel button, glue to hold in place.
• Stick smaller gems or pearls into each of the eyelet holes around the edge.
• Coat the gems with a thin layer of a decorative dimensional adhesive - I used glossy accents.
• Leave to dry

My daughter was very happy with the costume - and best of all it survived 2 hours of running around Eddie Catz soft play!
Thank you for looking
Regards
Stompy xx

A few Christmasy makes

After a mad rush up to Christmas (we had builders in insulating an old loft conversion) there was unfortunately little time to spend baking and making. I had started knitting some Alan Dart mice back in November, so these got finished to hang on the Christmas tree – one for each daughter.
I also decided that I would take cake pops to my sister-in-laws for our Christmas Eve family meal – the reindeer heads with orange Matchstick antlers went down a treat with the kids.
Having a 3 year old daughter – Hello Kitty is very apparent in our house and the day before putting the decorations up, she asked for a Hello Kitty door wreath and decorations for the Christmas tree. The wreath was a step to far - we ended up with a hand made willow, ivy and red berries, but unfortunately the hook kept falling off the door. For the tree we came up with the idea of making little Hello Kitty angels – we printed off some images, drew up the wings. Emily then cut out the heads (I helped around the whiskers), wings and the semi circle dress - the lot was stuck together with plenty of cellotape. A loop of silver thread was attached and a hoop of tinsel added for a sparkly touch. They looked great on the tree, and will be stored away for next year.
During advent, we had a Hello Kitty calendar, the sort where you got a little toy behind each window. By Christmas Day we had furniture for a bedroom, kitchen and lounge plus two little characters. On the back was a room scene to cut out but it wasn’t big enough for all the toys, so after Christmas we made a 3 storey house out of an old cereal packet. Unfortunately Emily decided they had to have stairs too – so an extension was added for the two flights of cardboard stairs. Each room was then decorated using the scrap wrapping paper from Christmas. So now Hello Kitty and Mimmy have a house to play in.

The scrap page was hurriedly put together on CraftArtist – using a number of Christmas themed digit kits

All the best for 2012

Regards
Stompy x