Pirate costume for my girl pirate !

I have already been immersed with sewing the grand birthday dress inspired by Princess Aurora , for the past 3 weeks or so. So it felt like huge accomplishment and to much relief that the dress was complete. Now I can look forward to Deepavali sewing, but no... My little princess loves springing surprise outfit requests out of the blue !

She had a Halloween parade at school and wanted to dress up as Girl Pirate . Me being the indulgent mom decided to give in to her custom request and put Deepavali Sewing on hold and get started on this outfit.

Do you like to sew costume, i somehow love doing them, imagine turning your dreams into reality, your vision to dress up as a character becomes real, the sheer joy and the loads of fun that comes with dress up , for me who believes in fairytales all along, especially for someone with bittersweet past , sewing up a costume is the just right excuse to indulge and envision all those dreams, my little girl dream on, you amma is here with you and for you in all your dreams and wish for them to come true, love you my little darling ! Check out the CellPhone costume and Robot costume i had made earlier for Adithis Fancy dress back home in chennai, though not made of fabric, still costume right !

Out of this outfit I had one thing done already the eye patch using felt and elastic , which I had made a month back , ever since the first trace of pirate fever caught on with Adithi..she even has made her own pirate map for treasure hunt you know ....

For the skirt part made use of white and black vertical stripe pieces, seamed together, this took a lot of time , though simple it was tedious !

The top was a white peasant top style with shirred neckline and sleeve hemline . Though pirates wear long sleeves, my pirate wanted a short one!

Then comes the vest , which though I would have liked to make in red, but since I had no red in my stash and had little time to do fabric shopping , decided to go with black and added maroon satin ties to it . Vest has loop tie up oepning the front and is halter neck 

Hat was stor bought so it saved me he hassle of making one!

So , Ta Da here comes the pirate ...watch out 

Group pies with rest of the merry team @Halloween @ School

Grapes ! oh so sweet ...

Dear Readers,

It was time for yet another competition @ Adithi's school, last month it was dance, the month before elocution, and what was it the month before, anyways, time to move on :)

Since I was having a stiff shoulder and had taken a break from swimming , I wanted to relax and not do any heavy duty sewing or craft, so decided to go for Grapes costume, thinking it will be for less easier than the robot outfit I made for her in 2012 new year celebrations in chennai !

Made a close neck long top with full sleeve and had its back full open with Velcro closure. 

Made a cap and Adithi painted leaves on chart paper, which were pinned on to the cap

Made gloves to cover the palms (could have given this a miss as her hands weren't visible after pinning the balloons ) sorry no photos of work in progress as I was rushing it all up in half a day !

Afr checking the fit, which was just perfect, hand stitched the blown up balloons on to the top carefully that I didn't burst them by poking the needle. This got tougher as I progressed from one layer to another , now I realise I should have gone bottom up instead of top down while stitching the balloons , would have made my work lot more easier, never mind , this is the learning I take from the project .

When other kids saw me waiting for Adithi in the corridor to dress her up, they rushed towards me and were curious to know why I am having a balloon dress , I asked them to guess and one intelligent girl guessed it right and they were so thrilled on seeing the dress , so was I, basking in the glory of the adulation of my creation ;)

Thank god for full back Velcro closure, it was lot easier to put the outfit onto her in few minutes. She was now all set to take the stage, except for one hiccup of course, it was her snack break and we had dressed her up and her hands were immobile. She was so happy that I will feed her in school, her dream come true :)

So here was the big moment, Grapes Eating Apple = Don't miss it :)

Meet Robot Adithi Version 2!

During New Year's Eve, we have a gala time at our Residential Colony and have various activities and games as part of the festivities, fancy dress for kids is a regular staple! For this when i was thinking about it, 2 characters sprung up in my mind and Adithi chose Robot out of them! The other one i had in mind was Shree Hanuman!

Since my hubby dearest was on block leave and was available during the entire week, i had him booked for during all the LED circuit work! 

Picked a carton which came for the new water heater and used it as the body, cut out the bottom side of it and reduced the width a little bit to suit Adithi's body measurements. Used the wrong side of the gift wrapper to get the silver sheen skin of the robot! 

Used cardboard sheets to make a box for the head. 

Used Amway bottles for hands and wraped them up with silver foil like paper! joined two bottles using silver wire and added silver foil paper on top to hide them. This meant that Robot can bend its elbow! 

Pants were the most difficult part to conceive. I wanted her to move around comfortably and yet had to make it match with rest of the costume, so used 2 layers, one fabric and on top of it, the silver foil like paper and made a pant with elasticized waist!

Used shoe boxes as shoes for the robot. Amway bottle lids were used as ears! 

Actually i couldn't take pictures during the actual fancy dress as i was busy getting her ready and then guess what nervous when she was performing i remained backstage and forgot to take video of her performance! god why do i become so nervous when she was cool as cucumber!

So i had to do a photo shoot on New Year's Day again and she was in no mood as you can see from the below pic!

BTW, Robot won the first prize in the fancy dress competition! yay!

Pin It

LED Project update ...

Here is the sneak peak of the LED Project i have been working on, this entire week, it is almost 75% complete.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Pin It

CellPhone Costume - Fancy Dress

My dear friend's son had a fancy dress competition at school. The topic was 'Product'. Since this was very generic, we were initially confused, when given an option, the fancy dress participant himself chose mobile phone and even scripted his own dialogue!

• I started with a cardboard and cut it up to the length measuring his height from head to ankle
  
• Then from about 3-4 inches from top cut-off about 8 inches for Display screen where his face will be shown..
  
• Added Slits at various heights to be tied around this chest, and stomach. Add ties through the slits and kep them ready
  
• Wrapped up the cardboard with silver foil kind of gift wrapper. (ensure the display area is left open)
  
• Then added panels by wrapping up newspaper with a reverse of a gift wrapper , silver foil effect, cheap and easy!
  
• Using  a black marker added the navigation, answer and cancel buttons and also the entire keypad.

Viola! cell phone fancy dress was ready to worn. I did not get to fit it around him and check it, but after seeing the pics my friend mailed, i guess i have nailed the measurements and positioning right.

How do you like this cute little 'cell phone'?!

Click Here to Pin This to Pinterest Pin It

Hibiscus Fancy Dress - Mini Tute

For Sale - Kids Custom Clothing From Adithis Amma Sews- Click Here

Customized Fancy Dresses - Made to Order also accepted 

Contact: adithisamma[@]adithisammasews.com

I saved a few pics while making the Hibiscus costume, thought of sharing it. Lets get started.

Materials you will need:  

Red Stocking (number depends upon the size of hibiscus you are planning to make, for the hibiscus i have made to be large enough as petals around my DD's head circumference, i used 1 stocking net for 2 petals)

Cut Red Stocking into half and stitch (lettuce edge effect) one side of it.

Green Stocking for bodice & hands (skip this if you have a matching turtle neck kind of green tee)

Yellow stocking for stamen (3 x 15 inches piece)

18 or 20 guauge wire for petals (thick wire because it has to stand still at such big size)
22 guage wire for leaves

Nosepliers, wire cutters.

Cut required length of gauge wire (I had cut approx 18-20 inches for 1 petal, since we are coiling it, the length would come down by about 20%, so keep this in mind while cutting the length of wire for each petal)

Wind it around a base tube (I have used a 'Dhandhiya' stick here, any cylindrical shape can be used, keep in mind the circumference of it and choose accordingly, to get big curls choose large diameter ones and for small flower petals you can even use crochet needles, in fact i have used crochet needles to wind coil for the leaves i made use 22 gauge wire)

Hold one end of wound wire coil tightly and pull the other end using nose plier, you will get curvy wire.

Curve it to match both ends, this forms a petal shape, wrap the stocking net over the petal from broad area to narrow area; the stitched closing of the stocking will at the broader area of the petal.

Pull the stocking tightly (not too tight!) till it blends with the curves in the wires, be careful while you do this, and don't do it harshly as the stocking will then tear (mine did, and i lost 1 petal in the process and had to redo!)

Make 5 such petals (or any number you deem fit to cover the circumference of the head for which you are making this)

Make a headband (just Google fabric headbands in case you need a tute on how to make them)

I added Velcro closure to the headband

Hand stitch these petals onto the headband by positioning the petals in such a way that they kind of overlap each other at the starting

Cut slash lines through the yellow stocking piece (do not cut it off, just do it till the edge) so that you will have shreds kind of look for it. add red color beads to 20 guage wire and wrap the yellow stocking around it.

Add this stamen to the band right to the front of the center petal.

I had a green tank top (but in different shade), so i put that on first and then wrapped a retangle piece of matching green stocking on top. 

Took 2 more same shade of green stockings, one each for hands and pinned the hand stocking to the bodice stocking 

Used RTW green leggings for stem alias legs!

Made coiled effect leaves using 20 gauge wire  in the same shade of green stocking and tied them around the wrist.

Viola. Your own Hibiscus costume is ready.

Check out the Tutorials Page for more ....

Click Here to Pin This to Pinterest Pin It

Meet the fresh Hibiscus a.k.a my Darling Daughter

Remember the teaser i gave in the Deepavali pics post... its time to reveal what i was working on this weekend...

At last, i got hold of the snaps from my sis's cam.

I was so excited at the fancy dress competition held at Peek-A-Boo patterns at Express Avenue Mall, Royapettah, Chennai, that i forgot to take pics in my cam when my DD was posing as a Hibiscus.

I had initially planned to make a lotus, since i couldn't find the pleasing pink for lotus and instead found lots of cheery red stockings, decided to make hibiscus after getting my DD's approval!

The teaser pic was that of a petal i made using 18 guage wire while i coiled on top of a 'Dhandia stick' and then expanded to get the curvy petals, then used stocking net on top of the wire and pulled it tightly to get those petals... it was my first attempt at working with stocking net (though it was on my LONG to-do list for really long) and i am quite happy with how it turned out.

Check out the Mini-picture tutorial to make your own Hibiscus costume
will post a mini-tute using the pics i had taken while making it , a bit later...

As of now fancy dress pics...

My DD a.k.a Hibiscus...

Check out Cell Phone Costume Tutorial from the Tutorials Page