Costume Time Again

I totally forgot that I would need to be making Halloween costumes before I finish Christmas projects.  The orders are flowing in.  Joey wants to be the Return of the Jedi Luke Skywalker and Lexi wants to be Princess Leah again.  They both were Luke and Leah when they were three and two, but that is what they want to be again.  Joey is a different Luke. The last costume was white, but this one is going to be black.  Lexi's will be pretty much the same, just bigger.  I will wait to work on theirs because I have some that need to be done by next weekend.  I finished two of those, Zoe's witch costume and Jackson's Batman costume.  I am waiting on what the two from Maine want to be.  I need to finish them by Thursday, because we are going up on Thursday night.  I hope they call soon to let me know what to make.  I always get things done, but I don't like needing to do them in such a short time, just in case I run into problems. Here are the two finished costumes.

Jackson's Batman is made of gray sweatshirt material.  I had a bunch of it and no other gray.  I couldn't see buying more when I could use this.  The hood, shorts, and leggings are made of black vinyl material. The cape is made of a light weight cotton material.  The mask is just one of those little black masks that go around the eyes.  I hot glued it to the hood.  The hood and cape are sewn together as one piece.  The belt and logo are made from felt and fused into place.  I bought the gloves.

Zoe's witch costume is a story in itself.  I thought I was making a child's size 7 pattern, but after I started sewing it, I realized that it was much too big.  I looked more closely at the picture and realized it was an adult 7.  I have done quite a bit of tucking to get it smaller and cutting to get things shorter.  I may still need to cut some more, but if she wears a belt, I think it will fit okay around the waist and I think I got the top short enough.  The skirt and cape still seem long.  Zoe is taller and bigger than most 7 year olds, so it may not be too big.  I sure hope not. It is really cute. It will be easy enough to just cut the bottom because neither of the materials that was used for the dress or the cape need to be hemmed.

This is just a view of the dress without the cape.

The hat is made of felt. It may also be a little big, but she can stuff it and it will fit okay.  She has a ton of hair so that should help to fill it out.

This just shows the hat sitting on top of the cape so I could get the whole costume in view.

I wonder what my next blog will be. Last year the two were Batman and a jack-o-latern.

Aahh...the Sweaters are Done!

I just finished the last of the sweater jackets that I am making for the granddaughters for Christmas.  I just finished Annie's, my youngest granddaughter.  It looks so cute.  I am happy to be finished with this project.

Annie is just 13 months now, so this is much smaller than the others.  It barely fit the hanger, as you can see, the arms are sticking way out.

I made a little mistake in the back of the sweater.  I was suppose to do short rows with four new stitches each time, but I did it with two new stitches, and so the back is longer in the middle than it should be. It still looks okay, but the back is quite a bit longer than the front and it should only be a little bit longer like with the other sweaters.

I am now ready to get back to the grandsons' jackets that I am sewing on the machine.  I still need to cut them out and sew them.  I wanted to finish the first two to see if they would come out the right size.  I need to use a whole new pattern for the two that are left.  I hate starting with a  new pattern because I don't like finding the pieces on the big sheets of pattern and having to cut them out to start putting them on the material.  It always takes more time than I like to devote to it.  But, since I am not good at enlarging patterns, I will need to do it to get the right size for the older boys. I also need to get to work on something for the men.  I have decided to do hats. Some will be slouchies (probably two) and the other three will be regular hats. I'm glad that the women's gifts are already finished, which I will blog after Christmas.

Jackets for the Boys

I have finished two of the four jackets I am making for the boys for Christmas.  They are all going to be the same.  I will only need to post these two because, except for the trim in Ezra's, they are exactly alike.  I did not have enough black rib knit to do all four, but I had some of the tan that I felt matched well enough to use for the one. I just had enough of it to do one, so this is the only one with tan.

Ezra's from the front is the only one with the light bands.

Ezra's back

Jackson's front view. This is the way the other two will look.

Jackson's back view.

Another Sweater and a Cake

I finished another of the sweater jackets. This one came out probably the best of all, I think.  I finally got the proportion of the top and bottom better.  Actually, there are only two that I really feel the bottom should be longer to be more in proportion to the top.

Front of Lucy's sweater.

Back view.

We just had an un-birthday party for the young women at church.  We decided to celebrate everyone's birthday at the same time, even though it wasn't actually anyone's birthday.  I made the cake for the event.  I chose to make a cake like the first cake I learned to make, an elephant cake.  Using two round cakes, the elephant is formed.  One cake is the body and the other is used to cut the head, legs, trunk, tusk, tail, and hat. I made balloons with mini cupcakes and yarn for the strings.  I put the initials of each of the girls on the balloons.  Everyone loved the cake.  I can't believe that it took me five hours to decorate the cake.  It just takes so long to design, cut, and frost it all.  It was so hard to do the strings.  I used yarn and hot glue to put them in place.

The cake looks more blue in this picture.  It actually was purple.

 I'm almost finished with the last sweater for little Annie.  I have had to make it so much smaller because she is only 13 months now, so she is much smaller than Portia's who is four. I still have to make something for the men, but I haven't decided what it is going to be for sure.

Finally...Four Sweaters are Done!

I finally finished the fourth sweater of the six that I need to complete for Christmas.  The pattern is the same, but I have had to adjust the size for each sweater, so I hope they will fit correctly. Each sweater is a different color. It has been difficult getting matching zippers. I found a place online that has all kinds of colors and lengths for open end zippers, but the color swatches I see on the screen do not always match the sweater that I intend it to be for.  The light purple sweater has been the most difficult. The first zipper I got was too light and I had to take it out.  When the sweater puckered a little, the zipper showed up too much.  I ordered a darker color, but when I got it, it looked more reddish, so I finally went back to JoAnn's and they had a new order in of long, darker purple zippers.  I decided to try that one, and it looks much better.  Even though it is darker than the yarn, it still looks better than the lighter one did.

This is the sweater that had a zipper problem, but as you can see, it looks okay with the darker zipper showing.

Back side of the sweater for Zoe, the largest of all six that I am making.

Dot's from the front shows the  buttons on the pockets better than the last one.

Again, you can see the buttons that go down the back bottom of the sweater better.

Lexi's from the front.  I'm a little worried that the bottom might be too short. Although I used the same number of rows of stitches, for some reason, it seems shorter than the others.

Since the back of the sweater hangs longer than the front, it looks better from this side. Lexi's sweater had to be done in hot pink.  If it isn't pink, it isn't worth wearing, according to Lexi.

Portia's from the front. Her sweater was the first I did and I'm not sure why, but it feels like the yarn was a heavier weight than the others.  It makes a very nice heavy sweater jacket. I wish the others felt this heavy.

This back view shows a truer color than the one above.  It is a very dark maroon color.

I will start on Lucy's next.  It will be done in a light rose color. She also likes pink and this is the best I could find that was not the same color as Lexi's.  I just wanted each sweater to be unique and since the pattern is the same, the color is the only way I can accomplish it. I'm saving Annie's for last because I am going to need to really change the size of the pattern for her.  She is just one and the next smallest is for a four year old. I could use a different pattern, but since everyone else has this one, I want hers to be the same.

Stuffed Toys for Charity

I became aware of the need for some small stuffed toys to send to the poor children in Honduras this past Sunday, so I decided to make a few.  I only had a week to get them finished because they need to be turned in by this Sunday.  I was able to complete a girl doll and a boy doll.  They took longer to do than I thought they would take.  It took two days each, so I was only able to make a couple more small animals.  I decided to use my easiest and fastest patterns for these.  All the body parts are done exactly the same, just the facial features, ears, and tails vary to make the animal look like the one it is supposed to be.  I decided on a cat and a dog since I was traveling away from home and had only taken a few colors of yarn with me.  That really limited what I could make with the yarn that I had.  Here are my few toys I will be able to donate.

The hair on the boy doll was a lot of work and so he took a bit longer to do than the girl.  He is also quite a bit larger.

Back view of the two.  I really like the way the boy's hair turned out.  He was supposed to wear a hat, but I liked the hair too much and it would have taken even longer to finish him.

The kitty's face looks a bit more like a mouse, but it will have to do. The puppy has a crooked mouth, but that just adds character. The head looks lighter, but it was done with the same yarn, so I'm not sure why. I guess that part of the skein was just lighter than the rest. The puppy also has one eye with a ring around it and one without, but you can only really see the ringed eye in this picture.

I wanted to show the backs to see the tails.  I ran out of the off white yarn, so I used some of the yarn that I used for the puppy and the yarn that I used for the rest of the kitty to make a ringed tail for the kitty. This view also shows how the puppy actually has two different colored ears.

I have still been working on the sweater jackets for the girls for Christmas.  I have three of them completely finished, the fourth just needs buttons and the tie belt to do and it will be finished.  That means I have two more to go.  I will blog the ones that I have finished as soon as the fourth one is finished.

Project of a different sort, storage bin seats

I never know what I am going to be asked to make.  My daughter is a school teacher and she saw this idea on Pinterest that she wanted me to make for her classroom.  They are storage bins with seats on the top so that they can be used in a reading center.  She showed me a picture and asked if I thought I could make them.  They didn't look too difficult, so I got started right away, as usual.  I bought the storage crates first.  She wanted four of them and asked for black. I luckily found some of the crates after checking in just two stores.  They are very popular around the beginning of school, but they have not been placed in the stores yet for that purpose.  I was happy to see that they had black because she is not found of bold colors like the crates often come in.  Unfortunately, they only had four crates.  Three were black, but the other was white.  I thought that might work because black and white go well together.  However, I knew that Cheryl would not like that three were black and only one white.  She would have been happy to have had two black and two white, so I was worried.  I bought the four anyway because that is all that they had.  I knew that I had one crate at home, but I couldn't remember what color it was.  I was really happy when I found out that it was black.  Now, I had four black crates with which to make the seats.

I looked around to find some wood to use for the seats.  I found an old shelf that would be perfect for two of them.  I found some thinner board that I wasn't happy with, but thought might work.  I knew it would be strong enough, but what I didn't know is that it would be too flexible and would not hold up along the inside lip that it needed to sit on.  I had to go to the store to get another board that would fit for the other two seats.  I found the perfect width, but just had to cut the length for them.  My son helped me cut the first four pieces, but my husband helped me cut the two new ones that replaced the thinner board that I tried to use first.

Next, I went through my material stash to find something to make covers with.  I found three pieces big enough for the four seats that I thought might work.  I had Cheryl pick the one she liked.  I'm glad she picked the one she did because it was a stretch knit material and worked perfectly for what I wanted to do to cover the boards.  First thing I had to do for the seats was to make pillowed cushions with a material that I knew would not be to her liking.  I stuffed the cushions and glued them to the top of the seat.  Then, I cut out a smaller black material for the back of the cover and a larger piece of the cover material.  I put in pleats around the edges so that the top would fit the back and be able to slip over the cushioned board, sort of like a pillowcase.  I left one end open so that I could slip the cushioned board into the cover.  Then, I stretched the end to cover the whole board and used a staple gun to hold it in place.  Before I could slip the cushioned board into the cover, I realized that the corners of the board would be too sharp and tear the material, so I got my husbands jig saw and cut off the corners and then sanded them so they would be smooth.  It worked really well and I was able to stretch the material tight without causing any holes.

I feel the project was a success that really didn't take that long to do.  It actually took me longer to get all the tools I needed to do the project than it did to actually do it.  If I had known everything I needed when I started, I could have saved time.  However, I often do not know what I'm going to need until I need it.

This is what the seat looks like from the side.  You can see the storage area below the cushion.

This is a top view of the four together sort of how they would be in a reading center, but probably with a table in the middle.