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 boy dungarees

I was browsing a fabric website, Backstreet Bargains, tootling about their remnant section, when I saw some licensed Caterpillar fabric. This is Caterpillar as in the company that make diggers and tractors and the real life versions of things that Tonka make as toys. Widget is loving "Digg-ah's" at the moment so I popped it in my online basket. The remnant section also included some cordoroy, in both blue and grey. I added that too. There was free shipping for orders over $75 so I kept shopping, and picked up some elephant stretch linen and a contrast linen. Those I have earmarked for a Leralynn dress for me for the summer, but the rest of it. That's for my boys.

It took me a bit of searching but I found a pattern for overalls I really liked the look of. The Okey-dokey Overalls from Peek-A-Boo Patterns. I was looking for a classic look Overalls, with enough pockets that I could make a feature of them. These overalls looked great with a bib pocket, two bum pockets and two hip pockets. I was right the pattern is great. I have always loved dungarees on little kids. My boys have a number of dungarees in their wardrobe, at least Widget does. Sprog did, but it is hard to find good-looking dungarees in sizes above 2years. Now I have the solution.

I used the grey corduroy as the main fabric for the dungarees. Corduroy is a great fabric to wear, warm and comfy. It's quite thick to double-up so for pockets and lining I used the digger fabric. I still have enough to make short summer dungarees too. I started with Widget's, since the digger fabric was what inspired the dungaree choice.

The sewing was interrupted for both boys. Widgets because I sent my sewing machine to get serviced which took just over a week, then by illness. I was having trouble with the topstitching, the back was getting all loopy. It's not a big problem most of the time, but for the bib, the loopiness was very obvious and getting worse.

Since I made them long I put in a lining for a turn ups. These are not part of the pattern, but I just cut a rectangle to size and sewed the edge to create a loop. The loop was attached to the bottom of each leg, the remaining raw edge folded, ironed, and pinned into place before attaching by topstitching.

Widget was very pleased with my efforts. He has at times carried the little dungarees about and thrown them at me "Digga" to show he wanted to wear them. 

With these done it was time to move onto big brother Sprogs. While we were waiting for my sewing machine to come back from being serviced, Sprog and I went to buy some lining fabric for him. He chose Spiderman for his linings. He also chose some Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fabric for his summer shorty dungarees to come. 

The first step was to carefully pick the placement before cutting the pockets. I tried in both cases to have a good image centred on the pocket. For the diggers it was the same image three times over, but for Spiderman there were different poses that I could select. 

For the hip pockets I just took whatever fabric was left around the holes made taking the bib and bum pockets. The instructions were very clear. These were my first attempt at hip pockets and they went pretty well.

After attaching the bib to the front piece progress was interrupted so I could whip up an Ewok costume, a Han Solo vest, and to focus on the R2D2 cake for Sprog's friend's birthday.

With that birthday party over and done with I returned to the dungarees.

I had to attach the straps to the back piece twice. The first time I didn't keep the pieces in place properly while I sewed, so only one side of the strap was attached. Some unpicking and a second try later I had the back piece I could attach to the trouser bottoms.

I had trouble finishing the seam on Widget's dungarees due to having so little space in the legs. I actually tacked the inner leg seam down by hand. To avoid this for Sprog's I worked backwards doing the inner seam first. My logic was that the inner seam is more important to be comfortable than the outer seam. I flat felled the inner seam then did the outer leg seams, attached the hardware and I was done.

It was late and well past my bedtime. Sprog was long asleep so I hung them on his wardrobe where he would hopefully see it when he woke and went to bed myself.

In the morning Sprog climbed in for a cuddle having completely missed the dungarees in his room. When we got up and went back to look, his face was a open-mouthed awesomeness. His trouser legs had a double turn up. He hasn't grown in the six months since his birthday so I figure he's overdue for a growth spurt and might need the extra leg length.  Once secure I also topstitched around again through the middle. This made a more secure turn up, it seems to make it take longer for the turn-up to fall down when there's a kind of pinch point to pivot about.

And the very happy recipient modelling the final product. He just happened to have the remnants of Spiderman face paint from preschool the previous day to match.

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When little brother Widget saw them he wanted to get in on the action.

Cake Edition - Thomas the Tank Engine, Paddington's Suitcase, Minion, Xylophone, and Paw Patrols' Lookout

I used to bake a cake, splat some icing on it and call it done. Then I went back to work after having my son and I guess some Mummy guilt kicked in coupled with a bit of "If she/he can do it I can do it"

Sprog's first birthday cake was a standard banana cake with chocolate icing. Sprog's second birthday cake was for a Thomas the Tank Engine themed party, so we needed a Thomas the Tank Engine cake. I baked banana cake, mostly because I had a lot of banana's to use up. Two slabs, which I then cut and stacked to get the right shape for a Tank Engine. Earlier in the week I coloured fondant and made wheels and a face using an online tutorial to guide me.

I fondant-ed the whole cake. It was my first time using fondant; I went a little overboard. If I were to make this cake again, and Widget's interests indicate I might, I would ice with butter icing, then accent with fondant, rather than doing the whole thing. 

 

The next year for Sprogs Third birthday, Widget was 3 months old, and I went for something simpler. It was a Paddington Bear themed party, and the cake was his suitcase. I made the cake slabs ahead of time with Sprogs help then froze them.  I made the "hardware" for the suitcase a few days out to give them time to dry and kept back enough fondant in the right colour to make the name shield and the corner protectors on the day. The writing I did with a skewer and black gel icing. 

Husband got in on the act, and I made a Star Wars themed cake for his birthday. Only a simple one the first time round. The letters are in black fondant, with butter icing as a base and yellow piping. The figurines my brother bought for Husband as a present and they made a great addition. 

A single dad friend was throwing having a party for his son. He was at a loss cake-wise so I made a cake for Master 4's Minion party. This time I cheated a little and used packet mixes for the cake, with yellow and blue colouring mixed in. I stacked the two yellow on top of the two blue cakes, with butter icing as glue. I covered the lot in yellow butter Icing then wrapped on blue fondant overalls. The top of the cake had the dungaree straps and fondant goggles and eyes, and I cut a smile into the yellow butter icing and pricked a Gru logo and buttons into the front pocket of the overalls.

  

Widget's first birthday was next, and he had a relatively simple cake, by my new standards. He had been showing interest in music/noise making so a simple cake that was still more than a basic cake was a xylophone, based on his plastic toy xylophone. Each key is made of fondant, as is the head of the bommy-knocker. The fondant is kept off the icing, and therefore dry, by licorice logs, with another licorice log as the handle on the bommy-knocker.

The last cake to bring us up to date was the Paw Patrol lookout tower. Sprog was in a big Paw Patrol phase when he turned 4 and had a Paw Patrol themed party. To complete the look was a Chase pup painted on the window, still there 6 months later, and a themed cake. The Paw Patrol lookout tower looks like this.

I made 4 cakes worth of cake in the end. Two as one  big chocolate slab cake, and two circular banana cakes. I considered making the whole thing out of cake, but it would have been too unstable. 

The chocolate slab I cut a hole out of and iced green with a grey fondant road. in the hole I put an Easiyo container. I taped another Easiyo container to the bottom part of a springform cake tin. A second springform tin bottom I taped to a ramekin, and cut a hole out of one of the circular cakes to fit it in the middle. The easiyo tin sat inside the first with a circular cake with a hole in it on top, then the ramekin and cake tin assembly sat in the middle of that. I made sure it all fit together and was relatively sturdy, then took it all apart and got decorating. 

   

The  final touch was the periscope. That was a couple of straws wrapped in fondant. When they were iced everything was carefully put together again then no one was allowed to touch it, and in the case of young people, go near it until it was cake eating time. 

So cakes. They are a thing I've started doing.