Happy Halloween!

Here is my Vanellope costume being worn! yea! I did Halloween this year on Saturday due to many factors, it was fun I met with some friends and we wondered around the Halloween festivities they had in town.



one thing I was not thrilled with on my costume is I think the sweatshirt is a bit long. I should have done a trial run before wearing it out in public. if (when) I wear it again I am going to take the time to shorten it. that way I wont have to keep pulling it up. besides that though I thought the costume turned out cute.

my hair things!


yeah my costume is a bit on the too blue and too light side, not quite as light as it looks in the pictures though it was really bright sunshine Saturday.

and a reminder pic of how little miss Vanellope looks.
had fun with this one. now its time to start focusing on Christmas.

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some non sewing aspects of my costume.

I have finished my costume yea!

here are some of the non sewing pieces of it. first off the leggings. I bought mint colored leggings, and used Jacquard textile paint I purchased on Amazon for the white stripes. number one lesson this taught me. don’t free hand paint things. I did mark with tailors chalk where I wanted the lines but they ended up a bit sloppy, not quite straight lines and such. I should have used painters tape or something so it would have been more even. I had to do two coats of paint so it took several days to do the painting. but it knew it would from the reviews of the paint. as for the quality of the paint it seems nice. I haven’t washed it or anything yet though so I don’t know how that will effect it. it does have a tiny bit of stretch to it, but not much without cracking. good thing I don’t need too much. if your going to need lots of stretch with the paint I suggest having your fabric stretched while you paint. the purple stripe is just puffy paint I had, painted on with a paint brush.
next is the hair things.

I painted two buttons I had with red paint to make them look like peppermints, then glued them with E6000 glue on to barrettes, and bought some plastic rhinestones, that I then glued onto bobby pins for the round sprinkles in Valenope’s hair.

now the gummy bears were more of a challenge as I had to find them. but I managed to find this really neat place on etsy that sells all kind of cute food things like plastic gummy bears. they look really real. so definitely not something one would want around little kids. I used E6000 glue to glue these to the barrettes as well, and am hoping it will hold. the site says to use silicon glue on the gummy bears, but the E6000 glue seems to be holding them . at least all of them except the green one, not sure why that is, but oh well I just wont wear that one.
delishbeads on etsy

for the candy jimmies I am going to use colored bobby pins. I tried to make some out beads which looked cute and I might use some of them, but my hair was not thrilled with them, tangling in the beads when I tried to take them out and breaking my hair. so I was not much of a fan of the ones I made.

the licorice hair tie is actually sewn! I bought some red macramé rope, cut it to the length I wanted, burned the edges, zigzagged three pieces together on my machine then hand sewed them around a piece of red pipe cleaner. which gives it the stiffness and flexibility I needed. I made three pieces then braided them together. and sewed the ends so they wouldn’t come apart. I then tacked it in a few places to make sure the middle would stay together too.
so that’s it my Venelope Costume is finished!

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Vanelope skirt

I finished my Vanelope skirt a while ago, but am just now getting around to posting it. its a very simple skirt with two layers gathered onto brown satin, one layer is shorter then the other to give it the layered look, then I added a waist band with full elastic. like I said super easy. I think it turned out cute and I will probably wear it not only for Halloween but also for everyday wear. all I have left on the costume now is painting the leggings. I need to get to it, time is running out.

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Vanellope Hoddie done!

I was finally able to go to the fabric store and found some cute knit with hearts on it. its slightly more green but I figure that’s okay. they had some without hearts but I liked the hearts better so its the one I ended up getting. the construction then went pretty quickly. actually the tiny piece I put in at the front of the hood to cover the stitching on the inside took the longest to put in. it was a piece not called for in the pattern but I wanted it to cover the stitching at the front of the hood. oh vanity can cause such frustrations. I used McCall's pattern #M6614 view D, with only a few minor changes. one being that the pattern is for a zippered front hoddie, and Vanelope’s is a pull over, so I cut the front piece on a fold rather then in two pieces. I also constructed the hood slightly different, since I needed button holes to put the string through and the pattern didn’t call for it. I did all the inside seams with just serging which works great on fleece and knits plus its what the manufactures do. it looked really good till I was trying to put the hood on and it wasn’t working. it was then I realized of course its not fitting, my serger stitch is only a quarter of an inch seam allowance and the pattern calls for five eighths seam allowance, so with four seams I had an extra inch and a half to work in plus the fact I needed to overlap the hood a half inch and the fact of it being cut on a fold not in two pieces added a bit too, so I am left trying to ease in a good three inches, and that just wasn’t happening. so I did some math and went back to the serger where I took off what I needed, and amazingly the hood fit easily after that. yeah that was poor planning on my part. its just one of those things I didn’t even think about till it wasn’t working then it was like oh yeah duh! I opted to go ahead and punch holes into the front with an awl for the red ribbon, since in the end I think it will look the best. so far I’m liking the way the costume is coming, I can only hope we have the perfect day to wear it when the time comes, not to hot, nor too cold, because around here one never knows what the end of October will bring.

the fabric I lined the hood with

the tiny piece that took forever to put in. and it really doesn’t look all that great, but it keeps the serging from showing, which is what I wanted

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Vanelope Von Schweetz hoddie

so I made it to the fabric store and bought the underlining for the skirt, and my fleece for the hoodie. here is what I have done so far on the hoodie for my Vanelope costume. the color looked a lot greener in the store, but that’s alright I think its close enough and I’m not entering any contests or anything its just for fun. I could actually be done with this by now but unfortunately ran into a slight problem, one that is totally my own fault! I forgot my list when I went to the fabric store which led to me forgetting to buy lining for the hood. something I feel its needs. otherwise my not quite matching serging shows its a bit darker so I don‘t like the way it looks on the outside. plus a lining will give it a much more finished look, which I want. I went ahead and put as much of the hoodie together as could without the lining. so the hoodie is now on hold till I can make it back to the fabric store. and this is something I really want to buy in person, so as to match colors as best I can. the fabric store is an hour away though so I want to combine it into another trip. I’ll make a special trip if its something I have to now, or for a bigger purchase but I hate to go that far for less then a yard of fabric. when I have six weeks to complete this. and will probably be out that way before then. if not I will make a special trip, but I highly doubt that will be necessary. the other thing I am trying to decide is how I want to add the red ribbon stitching to the pocket. do I want to punch it through the fabric which is how its supposed to look, or do I want to sew it on top without going through the fabric. I’m just not sure I want to put a hole in the fabric for the ribbon. but since this is fleece it wouldn’t really hurt it to do so, I would just have a little hole. and if I poked it through with an awl it wouldn’t be too large. I’m going to think on that one. so far so good on this one, which makes me happy.

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bamboo shirt

so as mentioned in my last post I purchased a few new patterns. one of which was simplicity #1692.

so I got right down to it with a bamboo print polyester I had in my stash. its a light weight soft knit with little stretch, which is not in the fabric recommendations for this pattern but I thought would look nice anyway. the pattern calls for a side zipper but I figured with the stretch in the fabric I really didn’t need one and I was right. which made the whole thing go together a lot quicker. I originally put it together exactly as the pattern indicated (minus the zipper of course.) but realized because of the type of fabric I used the neck facing needed to be cut down. especially around the sleeves. the pattern had the facing going a good three inches past the placket and was squared off on the ends. which made the sleeve hang wonky. again I think this is just from the fabric I used. a cotton probably wouldn’t do that. I went ahead and cut the facing down to about an inch away from the end of the placket and rounded it up nicely since the square points stuck out funny.

you can't really see it in the photo but it stuck out really bad.
the other issue I had with the pattern which essentially changed the entire look of the shirt was its length. okay so this was my own stupidity I should have checked length before cutting the pattern. I knew I wanted to be able to wear the shirt with my modern jeans and that this was a vintage reproduction, that should have cued me in to the fact it would be shorter then I wanted. but I didn’t even give it a thought till it was finished. it hung only about a half an inch below the top of my waist band. which would be fine if I stood still and never moved. but yeah that’s not going to happen. plus I wanted to be able to wear it to work, where I definitely wouldn’t want it riding up. since I had a bit of left over fabric, I decided to add a band to the bottom. which I think actually gives it a slightly more finished look then the original hem I had in it. the buttons were also from my stash. as I was putting the shirt together I was thinking how nice red buttons would look on this shirt, but then I couldn’t find six matching red buttons in the right size, and didn’t want to buy any, so I went through the brown ones and really I love the ones I chose. the color is just perfect and once I held them up to the fabric I liked them better then I would have the red, so yea for not having the red.

I want to make this pattern again using view D and A, also using one of the recommended fabric types and lengthening it before I cut. I wonder if I can get away with not putting a zipper in it without stretch, or if I will not be so lucky next time. its not that I can’t do zippers. I put them in things all the time its just so much easier and more comfortable to wear something without a zipper.

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time for halloween already?

For Halloween this year I have decided on Vanellope Von Schweetz from Wreck-It Ralph. I found the perfect fabric on ebay for the skirt. its pre pleated which is a plus for me since pleats and I don’t seem to get along very well. they never stay put, or fall right. maybe I should try looking up a tutorial or something on how to make perfect pleats. I mean I see others do it so why have they eluded me thus far? that of course can wait till I need it. this fabric it ready for use, in all of its pleated goodness. I have seen this type of fabric used a lot in formal wear, but never in my local fabric stores, so I was unsure if I would be able to find it or not. but once again ebay saved the day. its amazing all the thing one can find on that site.

as for the leggings I’m going to try and buy some minty green ones and paint the stripes on. I found some paint that is supposed to be good for that and not make the fabric stiff. I’ll write more on that once I get the leggings and try it out. I also need to find some fleece for the hoodie. I looked at one fabric store but they didn’t have what I wanted, so I must look at another later. I did buy a hoodie pattern though, for 99 cents. I love when they put patterns on sale like that except I always end up getting to many. I bought four this time, and that was without looking through the entire pattern book. had I looked at the whole thing I probably would have bought the limit of ten. I worked a bit on the skirt today. which included vetoing the black fabric I had pulled from my stash to use as the under layer. though I had originally wanted to use a dark brown I was content with the black. that is until I tried to use it. the stuff was so full of static it popped and crackled as I tried to iron it out, and when I picked it up it made my hair stand straight up! and it was a good two feet away from my hair. I have enough trouble with static without choosing something like that. especially with leggings underneath and I don’t want to be pulling at my skirt all day. so now I need so get fabric for under skirt as well. I did go ahead and cut the lengths I need for the skirt, then did a rolled a hem on the serger. now I’m at a stand still, Halloween is about ten weeks away, so I have time but I need to make sure not to put it off to long these things somehow just creep up on me really fast.

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