Saturday, April 30, 2016

Project Mania

So, when you have two fourth graders in your home and they both have huge projects, what do you do? You freaking make them, that’s what. Each had to make an “ancient artifact” and costume to go with it. I don’t have finished pictures of the other costume, but I will soon enough. I do have this one though. She wanted a chinese kimon-type costume with giant sleeves. This, people, is why there has not been much popping up on my blog lately. I could have probably have sewn this in a few nights, but instead, I watched and helped while she sewed most of it (bent over at the waist night after arduous night helping her feed yards of ravelling jaquard through the slloooowwwly moving machine – aaauuugggghhhhhhhh!). She sewed the whole body of the gold robe and I did the black “sleeves”. Joking aside, I was really pleased by her hardwork and follow-through. We spent a little bit of time each night working on this. One night we just spent folding miniature pieces of paper and reading the directions. I’m really proud of her. She loves it and that is what really matters.

We used Simplicity 1573, View F as our starting point. I traced the largest size (8) and made the facing wider. I also added length to the hem and sleeves because she is 9 and looong. When we sewed on the facing, we flipped it to the outside instead of inside. We also made a wider Obi-type belt instead of the thinner one pictured on the pattern. Really, we didn’t change too much about the pattern. I embroidered on the dragons (Korean, not Chinese) at night after she went to bed (109 minutes of stitches per dragon!!!) and then sewed up the black panels and attached them under the arms. Whew. I’m glad that’s done. I will try to remember to post pictures of her wearing this.

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Isn’t the embroidery amazing? It’s from Urban Threads. They have pages of dragon embroidery! Here’s the one I used
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I actually did get some other sewing done while the embroidery machine was stitching it’s heart out. Stay tuned!

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