Maui and Moana dress ups

Sprog and Widget were invited to a Moana party and wanted to dress up. Sprog, age 5 1/2 chose Maui, and Widget, age not quite 3, wanted to be Moana.

 

My general plan was for Maui's costume to be a shirt and shorts base with a leafy skirt and other accoutrements over top. I used the Beachcomber Shorts from Peek-a-boo Pattern Shop and the Bookworm Button Up from Blank Slate Patterns. Both of which I have used recently for Sprogs Star Wars Shorts, and Widget's Bob the Builder and Pirate shirts.

For fabric, I went to our local emporium where I knew they had tapa cloth styled cotton in multiple cotton. I hoped for tan and red, and ended up with brown and red. The red was for Moana,   In addition I found a large green/blue broach style button for The Heart of Te Fiti (I really really want to spell that the Te Reo Maori way of Te Whiti), a white shell coloured beading with silver ferns on it, a plastic "grass" skirt, and some plastic sacking like material. I'm not really sure what it is.

 

For the Maui costume I bought some large squares of felt in an off-white/bone colour, and some green weed mat, which would be the basis for Maui's leaf skirt, but supplemented with green scraps from my stash.  

Maui

 I started Maui with a shorts and shirt combo to act as the base. 

The beachcomber shorts I made as per the pattern, but with a higher back rise and a shorter front rise to allow for Sprogs shape. This made them a bit snug to pull on but a great fit once they were.

The shirt was adapted. Firstly, I didn't do the collar, but included the collar stand for a Mandarin neckline. The front was cut on the fold instead of in two pieces. I still cut one placket piece as per the pattern and used it on a half placket for a pull over the head shirt. Pockets and sleeve details were left off. Sprog was so pleased with it he wore just this part of the costume as much as he could all weekend.

Next up was the leafy modesty skirt. I cut a variety of leaves from the weed mat I hat bought, and leftover scraps. In three stages I layered these and sewed them onto a belt of elastic 60mm wide and slightly less than Sprog's waist circumference. The first stage was large cloth leaves, in case he decides to just wear the "leaves" at some point to make it more comfortable against the skin.

 

Maui's accessory is his hook. After sketching with tailors chalk I cut out a hook shape, then used the leftover from the middle of the hook to fashion a handle. On the handle I sewed straight lines with tan thread to distinguish it from the action part of the hook. When sewing up the hook before turning it inside out I was careful to leave a gap on the inside of the hook. Pulling the whole length of the felt hook through the narrow end wouldn't leave me able to push the barb points out.

Very carefully, and using a zipper foot I attached the handle part to the hook part then started stuffing. For a stiff hook it was necessary to have it very tightly packed. This hook is going to be swung about a lot by small people so it needs to be robust. Any weakness in the stuffing would allow a bend in the hook. There is still one small weak spot I am not happy with, but short of opening it up again I'm not sure I can get rid of it. I hand-stitched the close in two stages to get tight packing. The final step was to wrap the handle with twine to give it a bit more of a Maui look. I stitched the twine down then wrapped it around up the handle, and then back down again, securing at the seam lines using the hot glue gun.

Maui also wears a necklace of what I assume to be trophies, shark's teeth and the like. Sprog went to the beach with a friend and came back with some shells, one of which was perfect for a necklace.

And it was done!





Moana
Moana was easy to envisage but harder to execute. It's in three main parts, the top, the skirt, and the necklace.

For the top I wanted to have a shirred bodice for comfort, with a top section folded over for the beading. I ran into trouble when I couldn't get the tension right on my machine to use the elastic shirring thread. Flag that, Plan B was to use wide elastic to get a snug yet flexible fit. I put a section of elastic in the back between the two sides, then left the excess to 'wave in the wind'/be tied together as Widget wishes.  On the front I attached two flounces each with a row of silver fern beading handsewn along the edge of the flounce.

A section of the cloth was doubled over and sewn shut with curved ends to tie over the top of the skirt.


The skirt was easier in execution. I folded the weird sacking material on the angle to mimic Moana's skirt in the picture then layered the folded line with the 'grass' skirt and some cotton, then slowly attached the three together. The cotton layer was simply to make it more comfortable on bare legs. Slowly because every time I went fast I broke a needle. Then I checked against Widget and marked the length for once around his waist and attached velcro in two places, one at the end and the other one waist circumference away. Once attached I cut the sacking material shorter, shaped it with points, and used a single punch tool to punch holes in it. When I tried it on Widget he had trouble getting it to stay up. Little boys have no hips. I solved this with a pair of shortened Junior Joggers (Peekaboo patterns), with an extra wide yoga waistband and a strip of velcro on the front of the pants, and the inside of the skirt.

The last accessory for Widget was Moana'a necklace with the heart of Te Fiti (Whiti!). I removed many of the ferns from a length of the trim I put on the front of the bodice then interwove it with three lengths of cord, halfway down feeding two of the cords passed through the back of the broach/button. I hot glued the back of the button to ensure it would hang the right way up 

Little Gentleman Suit

A friend was looking for a suit for his son's sixth birthday, but was having trouble finding anything in a colour other than black. I offered to make him one, with my labour being our present to him.  I used the Little Gentleman Pants and Vest, and the Little Gentleman Suit Jacket from Peek-a-Boo Pattern Shop. There is also a tie and bow-tie pattern in the Little Gentleman range, but I haven't bought or made that one yet.

The fabric choice was dark blue baby corduroy and some red/peach linen I had in my stash for the linings. The boy for whom the suit is being made, Darville, likes to wear suits as everyday wear, so it needed to be durable.

Darville measured as a 5/6 for height and chest measurements, but a 3T in his hips. I cut everything out as a size 6, to give him some growing room. I made the trousers up as normal, then took in a half inch off each side to get a better fit. The size 6 also has half elastic in the pants, for a flat front, compared to 3/4 elastic in the  smaller sizes. To allow room for growth I put in 3/4 elastic here too.

The lining of the vest is in the red/peach linen, as are the welt pockets. The vest pattern doesn't have pockets on it, but the jacket does. I lined up the armscye of the cut out vest, and the armscye of the jacket front pattern piece to place the pockets. The vest pockets were important for the pocket watch he was also getting as a present. The pockets on the jacket were left off.

              

Capes to the rescue - A superhero and a girly cape

Sprog was invited to yet another party. Should anyone be reading all of this blog they will have started to notice a theme. This time was for a girl turning 4, and her little brother turning 2. Widget came along too as he knows birthday boy.

I didn't know anything about either kid. Sprog says he doesn't play with birthday girl, but the teachers at preschool assured me she was a girly-girl so I went for my fallback of something pink and sparkly. I used the same pattern as the last time I made a cape, but this time the fabric was both pink and sparkly, rather than pink with a sparkly overlay. I finished the seams by flat felling them, then trimmed with inch-wide ribbon. The ribbon was laid around the edge of the cape first. I then used a separate piece around the hood, with about 30cm/12in excess on each end to use as the tie.

  

Birthday Girl opened it, put it on, said she loved it, then dashed away to play dragging Sprog with her. 

Little brother Birthday Boy is another kid I know very little of, but having two little boys I was at less of a loss. Superheroes are always popular, so another cape was planned. I left my options open and went fabric shopping. I ended up with some plain black cotton, and a red velour with spiderwebs all over it. With some yellow fabric I had already, I planned a reversible Spiderman/Batman cape.

I used the Superkid cape pattern from Peekaboo patterns as my base, first cutting out the cape, then using the scraps for the bat shape. Using a Bat Signal image I found using Google,  I traced the bat onto double sided interfacing and ironed it on, then cut, ironing the shape onto yellow before stitching round the edges with a black zig-zag. 

If you look closely you can see a yellow bat shape.

I backed the yellow with single sided interfacing to strengthen it,  cut the oval about 15mm from the edge of the bat, pinned it in place, then used yellow thread to zigzag the outer curve. You could use double sided interfacing again, but I was running low, and it was an easy shape to sew in place anyway. 

Before assembling the two sides I put a little interfacing in the ends of the straps to stabilise where the popper was going to go. 

Then it was just a matter of sew it all together, turn, topstich the edges and attach the popper. Sprog modelled it for me and it was ready to go.

I bought way too much fabric, so I think Sprog's Batman mad bestie might be getting something similar for his birthday next month.

A simple pirate hat

Sprog gets invited to a lot of pirate parties, previously I have made him a cardboard tube sword and scabbard, and a pirate vest. I have been talking about using the pleather scraps from the vest to make a hat for a while, so the time had arrived.

It was a very simple sew. I took a large square of pleather and folded it wrong sides together. Then I tucked the fold in on itself. You could also get this effect by folding right sides together, then folding back over the fold leaving an inch or so of the original fold in place.  I sewed perpendicular to the fold at each end.

Next I cut an approximate pirate shape to the fabric and stitched around the edge. Pleather is hard to sew on my machine when the right sides are out, as it sticks against the foot. To combat this I used masking tape down the line where I wanted to sew, sewed the line, then peeled the tape away.

Next up I cut a slit in the original fold, and tested it on Sprog's head. I repeated this till it was nearly right, then rounded off the ends of the slit. The rounding off was to make it less likely to tear, and to make it prettier.

This morning shortly before the party Sprog cried "Mummy, you gotfor the bones" (His own take on forgot). Indeed I had, or rather I wasn't going to bother until he said something. Ideally I should have put the "bones" on before sewing it up, but since I was making it up as I went along that was risky business. 

For the bones I cut a skull, lower jaw and femur bones out of the pleather which conveniently has a white backing. I also had white knit scraps I could have used, but the pleather is stiffer and will hold shape better, and the two "leather" sides stick together well making them easy to keep in place while sewing. I tacked them in place using a needle and thread, big stitches as I was in a hurry and the hat was done.

Here's my happy little pirate.

Next pirate party it will likely be the turn of the flowy pirate shirt, or the pirate trousers.

Preschool Olympics T-shirts

Today at Sprog and Widgets preschool was a celebration of the Olympic's opening. Kids were encouraged to dress up in national costume. My boys have worn their All Blacks outfits from their uncle so many times I decided  not to go the easy route, but do something new.

Sprog has been fascinated by maps lately, and we have put a world map on the wall for him. So far he loves New Zealand, Australia (though he often calls it Melbourne), Daddy's country (Daddy is from Britain) and Russia. Russia is big. Russia covers half the map, and on a NZ central map, Russia is one complete county smack bang in the middle.

When it came to choosing what country he wanted to represent he chose Russia. Given the the other idea I was going for was Wales which has a dragon on it's flag I was happy with Russia, with it's standard tricolour flag.

Widget got Israel. because his name is Hebraic, and it's an easy flag to sew.

I woke a little early and dashed to my sewing space. I had some white knit in my stash that I had picked up from the op-shop, and some coloured felt left over from the Paw Patrol vests to use for the flags.

I hadn't made T-shirts for the boys before so I used a T-shirt from each of them for a pattern, folding it down the middle and cutting on the fold. I kept Widgets a little away from the fold to allow for a seam allowance, a bit too much really, Sprog's I just cut about 1cm away.

I cut a base flag for each boy from white felt, then layered the blue or blue and red on top, pinned and stitched. Sprogs was easy two strips on top of the white. Widgets I cut 6 little thin strips and pinned three in a triangle, sewed, then put the other three on inversely, and sewed again. The flags were sewn onto the fronts of the t-shirts, then the front and back sewn together.
Sprogs was quite narrow, and Widgets quite roomy, probably as a result of the T-shirts I used as patterns.

Sprog was very pleased with his. Widget still just wears whatever we throw at him.

Both shirts were worn again two weeks later for the closing ceremony, still unhemmed, but as the're knit it doesn't really matter!