little yoda hats

I've made twin Yoda hats for my kids after seeing this  on flickr during the KCWC

A friend recently gifted me with some stuff from her stash since she's preparing to pack up and move away to get married (yay for marriage!). Included in it was a strip of green fleece. As soon as I picked it up I thought "hmm, this could make a cute Yoda hat!"

When my husband saw my half-done pile of work he asked if I was making kermit hats. Humph. Ok, the fabric IS exactly Kermit green. But Yoda is also techinically a muppet, so there you go.

I consulted Clover about it, and she agreed that a Yoda hat would be a great idea. In fact, there was almost enough to make two hats, and with a touch of supplementing on the lining I managed to produce one for each girl. We now have twin Yoda girls. 

Clover's modeling is so hilarious, and violet's face so sweet that it was hard for me to edit down. I managed to scrap several shots, but I left in some of the real zingers.....so here we have the Yoda twins.

I used the cozy winter hood pattern from Little Things to Sew, and made my own ear pattern. They are a little floppy, but I think they look pretty cute. I also added some embroidery wrinkles at the forehead, and some machine stitching wrinkles to secure the lining to the shell, and add some more Yoda-like texture. The dude is old afterall.

And this Jedi master is FIERCE

Yoda has a great used car to sell you. "The car you've been looking for, this is!"

Sorry for the picture overload, but this was just too much fun. The girls love their hats. People have been commenting on them all day. So success!

painted hoodie

 hand painted knit hoodie

Clover has attempted a sweater and jacket coup recently. First she decided that in order to be "the girl" she must be in a skirt or dress at all times. Then as an addendum, she revolted against anything worn over her beautiful outfits that would ruin the "girl" quality of them. 

She has one hoodie that I found on clearance in Target last year, and I think it's pretty cool. She, however, does not, and pitches a fit every time I try to get it on her. 

One option for fixing the issue was to go find something in a store, spend some money, and risk the inevitable clash we would have over something that screams "girl" to Clover, but makes me want to puke every time I inhale its princess fumes.

The other was to frankenstein together some various leftover white knits I had into a hoodie (I could then justify getting a pattern I had long been looking at.....) 

But white was NOT going to cut it. Particularly when lined in gray because I haven't got enough of the white, or anything else girly enough to use. 

I asked Clover if pink dots would be "girl" enough for her to wear, and she enthusiastically threw her support behind this idea. Of course, the mention of pink dots meant that I got asked several times each day following if they were ready. 

Finally they are. Clover has some snazzy new girl dots to wear out of the house. I used the Heidi and Finn unisex urban hoodie pattern

(sssshhhh, don't tell Clover it's unisex!)

 And some leftovers from Violet's wolf suit, Clover's princess leia dress, 

and Violet's lego shirt (among other things), and most of the fabric from some nice french terry sweatpants that I was never going to fit into again (thanks Violet!). 

And I busted out my fuschia fabric paint yet again, painting a design onto the pattern pieces before sewing them up. I used a dumpy old paint brush for it, so the brush strokes are rather.....rustic....but I like how it turned out for the most part. 

 

 

 The body of the hoodie didn't turn out as planned, unfortunately. I like the original design of the hoodie, but as I was sewing it together I realized that with the thick outer fabric, and the semi thick lining, it was getting pretty bulky and not super stretchy. If I made it into a pullover like the pattern has you do, I was worried that it would be really hard to get onto her, and lack of dressing ease is pretty much a death sentence to kid clothes. 

So I left it open and changed the way the bottom cuff attaches. It doesn't look fantastic to me at the bottom, and I don't like it all that much, but what are you going to do? It will get worn more this way.

Clover snatched it up and insisted on wearing it to the playground yesterday, even though there were no cuffs or buttons sewn on yet. As she played I decided I liked the casual blazer vibe of it hanging open, so I attached the buttons to give the option of it looking like that, or buttoning up more for better coverage. 

She says she loves it. So count that a win for mom. 

 

 Of course, things can't ALWAYS be girly......

because this cracks me up

Thank you Target dollar section for the pair of "accessory" glasses. I handed them to Clover on our walk today and told her to act like a nerd. Somehow this translated into a short act that resembled a pissed off librarian telling someone off.....

"Excuse me, sir, this is a library. Not a frat house"

"Don't make me silence you myself. I've been hanging out in the martial arts section"

"Good heavens, does that child have a lollipop?"

"Use your inside voices!"

"I'll bet these ruffians know nothing of the Dewey decimal system"

"Turn your dang ringers off!"

 

"I'm watching your child sorting books improperly into the return receptacles. I am not amused."

randoms

  

Fun from several days ago....

Rain! And raincoats and boots!

In the above shot, I snapped the picture mere seconds before Violet fell down in that giant water hole

 

frying pan farm

bedtime game of catch

 

painting wooden clothes pins to make some little fairy princesses and princes

 

fun family walks.....

Having a smartphone is FUN! Being able to just whip it out and snap shots of life, quickly edit them and throw them up on facebook or instagram is great. I don't always want to do the painful process of getting photos loaded onto the computer, edited in elements, and saved (while my kids crawl on me, go nuts, scream, cry, and do all the things they normally do while I'm trying to use the computer). 

In other news, I didn't totally peter out of Kids Clothes Week Challenge. I finished a skirt for Clover, but it has yet to be photographed or even tried on in its finished state. It was a bit of a dumb idea to even attempt this thing, but I did it anyway. My hope was to get a skirt finished for her because she is pretty adamant about dresses and skirts being her uniform for life. At first I thought "I'll just do something simple. Nah, simple with a TWIST.....or maybe I should look on the internet for ideas". Somehow I ended up on etsy looking at this

 

 
So I've got my bizarre mini version of this awesome skirt here, and it didn't turn out exactly as planned, but I only hacked up and sewed, seam ripped, and sewed again and again the big purple wine colored sheet. It's provisionally got some lame elastic in the waist because I just realized I'm out of the waistband variety. We'll see how my version of the skirt looks when Clover is wearing it. She calls it a princess skirt because it's a full maxi length, so at least it can be dressup!

KCWC wednesday : at-at shirt

These not so greatly shot pictures of the At-At walker shirt are going to have to suffice for now, because I didn't have a chance to get any before Violet spied it this morning. Still with its body stuffed with a piece of cardboard to guard against bleeding paint, Violet caught sight of it this morning and said "*GASP*!! that's a at-at! I want it. I need to wear the at-at shirt.

So I quickly set the dried paint with the iron and made her day. It's pretty difficult to get a good, still shot of her wearing anything. Not only does she never stop moving, but if you pull out the camera she runs behind it so she can see what you're taking pictures of.

Poor Violet is obsessed with this at-at that is up on a high shelf in Clover's room. It's way too big and way too rickety for her to play with right now, but she pretty much asks every day to have the at-at. We call it her white whale. Someday, when she stops being a destructive maniac with a tendency to try to "ride" everything, she will get to play with the white whale. 

I used the Banyan pattern from Figgy's for the shirt, and snagged some leftovers from the princess leia dress to make it. It's a really soft, beautiful organic jersey. Too bad I totally mangled it when I was making the dress.  I used the girl handkerchief tunic view in the pattern, but altered it to have the regular body. I like the fitted sleeves in the girl version, but the fabric savings of the boy version ^_^

I need to figure out why the necklines on my Banyan shirts keep coming out gapey. They don't lay down on her body, but puff up and out a bit everywhere. They don't look like that on the pattern pictures, obviously, so I am probably doing something wrong. Maybe I need to go up a size on her if the chest or pits are too snug?

 

For the paint I used some Jacquard that I got forever ago at Bolt in Portland. It's mostly fuschia, but I mixed a bit of blue in at the bottoms of the feet to give it a dirtied up look. And I did the image with a freezer paper stencil. I think I need to mix some water into the fuschia, because it's gotten clumpy in its old age, and I'm having a hard time getting good coverage with it. The last two designs I've done have ended up looking....vintage. Ha. 

Violet loves her shirt! It goes well with her matching lego head shirt. I guess I need to keep making her nerd shirts with pink graphics. Death star, anyone?....

where the wild things are - wolf suit

 

Violet is pretty well living in her broken-in, dirty, smudgy wolf suit at this point. After getting stalled on finishing it for want of ribbing to make cuffs from, I finally banged it out over the long weekend. It needs whiskers.....they'll get there eventually.

The outfit is made from some organic sweatshirt fleece knit that I found for a really good price on fabric.com when I bought Clover's princess Leia fabric. What I really wanted was sherpa made from a natural fiber, but that was going to be WAY too spendy, so I settled for this and sewed it wrong side out. The fuzzy side is on the outside so it's a little more "furry". My hope was that there would be some pilling as it gets washed (over and over and over because this thing is WHITE)

In the photos her giant wolf ears look hilariously big, but I like how they look when she is running around. They have gotten lumpy after the several washings this thing has undergone. Some of the fluff from the top of the ears has migrated south. Oh well. 

On her left side there I embroidered "I'll eat you up I love you so", which is a line from the book/movie that I say with the kids.

The first version of the hood was too short, and when she wore it up it pulled the back of the outfit up, so I picked it out, added a panel going horizontally at the bottom of the hood, sewed it back on, and added darts to the front sides of the new panel so that it fit right. Then I put in a casing at the top of the opening and ran elastic through it since that helps hoods stay up better. Now it fits perfectly, isn't too tight, but never falls off accidentally.  

I tried getting her to wear a crown with her suit, but it was a no go.  

Faux fur for tails is a lot more expensive than I realized. Had I known I would have kept my eye out for something hideous at the thrift store. Her tail was stuffed, but I had to shorten it and left the stuffing out the second time. It was making the end drag all over the ground.

Several times we have gotten comments while we're out like "hey, nice wolf suit!". Violet loves wearing it...so success!