Tag Archives: halloween

May the Force be with me…

Halloween is becoming a fun excuse for me to dress up Benji for our get-togethers with friends. And who says you
can only have fun dressing up little girls?

Last year, we had a fuss-free outfit and Benji was not totally clued in on what was going on!

This year, it was as clear as daylight what he would enjoy being costumed as… I present: Young Ben Kenobi!

Halloween 2010

I have the Taftc apparel pattern and sewing course to thank for the confidence to work on this project with the Simplicity 3575 pattern. The Dad said that the costume should not have a sash but I included it anyway to keep the layers from getting into the boy’s way.

Halloween 2010

For fabric, I used this lovely brown Essex Linen that I bought a long long time ago. There are a few learnings from this project:

1) Buy the pattern from the store, instead of purchasing the softcopy. I had to print 41 pages on my printer and used about 2 rolls of tapes taping the pages together. Even then, some lines were wonky. TEDIOUS!

2) The sleeves and robe length were way too long even when I used a XS child size which listed the same measurements as Benji’s.

3) The pattern doesn’t provide overlocking instructions or seam finishing recommendations. I will simply overlock every piece of fabric cut-outs in the future.

4) The sleeves were too long for my Son, and I decided to ‘hem’ the sleeves with the Blind Hem Stitch. I found it much easier to hem the narrower ‘tube’ by hand.

5) For the robe hem, I finally got to use my blind hem footer on the Bernina as it is meant to be used! It was so easy and it really works great on the garment.

Looking forward to next year’s dress-up already! 😀

Good Grief! It’s November already?

The whole family was taking turns catching the cold/flu/sinus bugs. I had no bandwidth to craft, sew, or take any photos. The only thing that kept me sane was the occasional sale and convos from the Etsy shop. Hopefully, I’ll have more to share in Nov!

This Halloween, we were invited to a friend’s place for dinner and trick & treating around their neighborhood. The weather was DREARY. It rained and rained and stormed some more. But after dinner, the rain let up some and we brought the kids out for some spooky fun!

Talk about last minute ‘inspiration’, I whipped up this outfit from 12-1am Friday night. I don’t have any solid black fabric for the zig zag and had to make-do by using the reverse of a black fabric that has some grey swirls on the front. I used Therm O Web’s Strong No Sew fusible webbing and ironed the zig zag straight unto the T-shirt. Not a stitch sewn! 😀

Forward looking: I ordered a WHOLE bunch of delicious baker’s twine (in various colours!) for the holiday season and I’ve been prepping them for a secret project. More about that later! 😀