Family Friday 11.1.19

 I was reminded recently that I haven't blogged in a while.   I pointed out that I can either sew, or blog - and since there was a quilt show and then Halloween, there was sewing, not blogging.  But its all done, so now I can blog!

Yesterday was Halloween. 

We got 6 inches of snow for the occasion.  Ridiculous.

I only had to make two costumes this year.  And they were the same.

 Jawas from Star Wars! Can you say oootini?

 We also had Harry Potter in the bunch,

Mr. Riley is wearing a Ravenclaw scarf (he was the warmest of us all)

 E & W came along for the fun, they didn't actually ask for candy this year.  That's more than fine.  We get PLENTY!!

 For dinner I served "Snakes, Eyeballs, and mouldy bread".  Also known as linguine with Pesto, cream cheese filled olives, and Italian bread, dyed.  They ate it well.

Luigi Overalls & Hat

Mr. Luigi here was a part of the using up of fabric.  And also using a pattern I already had. In the past I used Simplicity 4832 to make vests and a skirt for E (way back).  This time I used it for the green overalls.  It was nice to follow a pattern for once and not have to make stuff up.

 The green for the overalls was from a Peter Pan costume two years ago (pre-blog).  The fleece for the hat was left over from last year's dinosaur costume.  The hat was from the pattern as well.  Just a circle with elastic around the edge and I added a brim.

I'm thinking of using the pattern for some corduroy (from the stash) overalls for the younger boys.

Mermaid Costume How-To

It is dark and grey and cloudy and rainy here in Wisconsin today.  So, even though I finished my blouse last night, it is not a good day for taking pictures.  Instead, I thought I'd show you a bit of how I put together E's mermaid skirt.
 First I took some old T-shirts and cut them into the skirt with a tail - this is the underpart which no one sees anyway.  Then I chose my scale fabrics, and cut scalloped strips out of them.

I then pinned on the scallops and sewed them down along the bottom/scalloped edge.  I just built the scales in the same process all the way up the skirt.

 I didn't worry about raw edges because two of the fabrics were knit and while the other one did fray some, it's just a costume!
Hind sight being 20/20 of course, it probably would have been faster to fuse the scales, but then again, maybe not.
Any way, a happy mermaid. 

Oh, and for the 'seaweed' in the hair, I just found some fun fluffy colored yarn and tied a bunch of strips to a head band.
As Mr. Riley says, probably the first girl who ever wanted to dress up like a quilt.

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet

Ok, so I hope I don't really have stinky feet - but this is what my kids have been running around saying for a couple of days.
I realize this is two posts in one day, but I figured if I waited to get these pics up, it would be a bit late.  I am ready to move past Halloween!  Probably because of the amount of time I spent on these costumes.  

In actuality we had Dinosaur Feet (Willosaurus)

 And Duck Feet.

And some Pegasus Feet  (hooves?)

Lollipop Ghosts

One year for Halloween, my mom and I bought suckers to hand out and turned them all into ghosts for the Trick-or-Treaters.  I mentioned this to Ellie, and the next thing I knew she had made three - with tape.  We redid them with string and here they are.

All you need is a white tissue, string, and a sucker - we used both Dum-Dums and Tootsie Pops.  Just what we had in the house.  Tie the tissue over the sucker.  Use a marker to draw eyes.  Hang them up, or hand them out! Super Duper Easy!