Scrap Sunday: dressing up made easy… if not a little too easy

Posted on 27/09/2015 by atelieroursonne

When I posted my to do list a couple of weeks ago, I might have mentioned two costumes for a party where my children were asked to turn up as Tiger Lily and pirate.

I wasn’t too keen to be honest. I guess it is just my natural dislike of doing something that wasn’t my own choice but someone else telling me what to do (Believe it or not, a part of me (qualified teacher) doesn’t want my children to do their homework properly 🙂 )

Anyway, I didn’t want to spend too much time on the costumes plus I actually like the simple ones that leave enough room for imagination much more than those sets that make every little girl look like a certain princess and every little boy as a certain super hero. Considering that I have made quite a few costumes in the last few years, I guess I should at some point put them all together in one post put for now let me just remind you of the Room on the Broom witch and her dragon. I think the latter is one of my favourites.

But back to the Peter Pan party.

For the pirate, I decided that an eye patch (shop bought and plastic, was better than the one I had made a few posts ago), a triangular pirate head scarf made of two scrap pieces of a shark themed cotton and a belt together with a stripy T-Shirt and some shortish leggings would be enough.

I was once again convinced that the red and white stripes used for the knight costume would make an ideal pirate belt and I decided to do a double sided belt as I did suddenly feel a bit guilty about my negative approach, I guess any scarf wrapped around the belly would have been just fine.

To save on the precious stripes I chose the blue dots for the other side – also to give the pirate a choice, depending on the mood and the rest of the outfit.

I then put in some kam snaps as, once again, they seemed perfect for this occasion.

I decided on two rows of snaps to make sure that the belt can be worn for longer, or by different children. I guess, that was a bit unrealistic, but if there is already a choice of designs then surely there should also be a choice of sizes to make this the ultimate pirate belt.

Unfortunately I can’t really show you of the belt worn by a pirate, first of all he refused to wear a suitable T-shirt and put it over a jumper which did not really make him look like a pirate at all and secondly I do not have any pictures of the worn outfit which would pass my “no faces online” policy.

For the Tiger Lily, I took a left over light yellow cotton and cut two rectangles (length: shoulder to knee-ish, width: shoulders plus a few cm)

On one of the shorter sides, I created the shoulders, leaving the middle of the edge open for the neck, then I cut out a neckline. With the serger I just went around all the edges and made a rolled hem and then I closed the middle of the longer edges, creating armholes but leaving it open at the bottom to make sure that the “dress” has enough room to move around and climb on pirate ships.

As I had known that the Tiger Lily was particularly unhappy about her forced costume, I wanted to make up for it with fancy trims and so I had, already on my last shopping trip, bought some leather fringe and put it on the hem and also across the chest, rather than just cutting a fringe into the hem which would have been my initial idea.

And for the headdress I had chosen a pretty blue trimming, closed it with a piece of elastic to make sure it would fit and just sew on a red feather.

I am afraid that is the best picture I can offer you but at least you can see that it is really a perfect costume to play and climb.

So just like the simplicity of the costumes should inspire the children’s imagination, I am hoping that the lack of quality of the pictures will inspire the imagination of my dear readers 🙂

Scrap Sunday: authentic knight costume

Posted on 20/09/2015 by atelieroursonne

I guess, I will most likely loose one of my dear readers when I post pictures of this extremely well researched and authentic knight costume. He is not only a historian but also a Lord of the Rings ~~fanatic~~ expert. In my defense…. well, there is no defense, so lets just get it over with. Just a few words before we have a look at the pictures.

So, as you might remember, the little Mr No Thank You has since a long time requested a knight costume made from the beautiful light grey fabric with white dots he had once chosen in the shop for this purpose. So I thought his 4th birthday might be a good occasion to finally follow up on my promise. In addition he also got a very elaborate wooden shield, made and painted by daddy and big sister. That shield is actually really cool and makes my costume look even more ridiculous. (During the birthday party two mothers were admiring the “helmet” and thought the fabrics would make a great skirt!)

But, should I tell you a secret? And please never ever tell the brave and fierce knight. But thanks to my pregnancy hormones I find my little knight extremely cute in his costume. I guess, not quite the look I should have been aiming for 🙂

So, lets have a look at each item:

the trousers:

I have used the requested fabric for these and made them from the bottom part of a dungaree pattern from farbenmix and just added a few centimetres on top to make a casing for an elastic band.
I have used this pattern a few times, sadly I do not have pictures of the first version, they were quite 70s.

the tunic with the emblem style pattern – no idea to call this

I thought the red and white stripy fabric would be very suitable and somehow I was convinced the blue dots would go well with it. At least this way the costume doubles up as a clown’s costume. How very efficient. 🙂

They are both left over fabrics from a play pen cover I had made a few years ago. (so this is the Scrap part of this post, just to justify why I am using a Scrap Sunday post for this project)

The blue lines are made from shop bought bias binding. My initial idea was to use a black one but I wanted to match the shield which has blue lines.

I made this without pattern, just using rough measurements and I made a split neckline for easy access. And for easy sewing I left the split without the bias binding.

the helmet thingy:

I have used a hood pattern from the usual pattydoo shirt and just added a circle at the bottom: I measured the length of the bottom line and took this as the circumference of the inner circle and added a good 15cm for the outer circle (which is too much for a little knight – it does look perfect on my shoulders though).

I enhanced the hood part with a rather strong interfacing. If I had to make this helmet again, I would probably alter the pattern a bit and make it a bit less pointy at the interfacing makes it stick out a bit.

I lined the whole thing with a nice grey fabric, I once found in a remnant box in a shop in Shepherds Bush.

As mentioned before this combination would apparently be lovely for a skirt. At least according to some mothers at the birthday party. Which was about the first time I doubted the fierceness of the costume 🙂

I promise I will do my very best to stop seeing him as mummy’s little boy and start making him less babyish costumes. After all, he just turned 4 🙂

Scrap Sunday: Origami Purse

Posted on 06/09/2015 by atelieroursonne

A couple of weeks ago I saw a cute little project on an Austrian sewing blog and I really wanted to try this Origami purse as a Scrap Sunday project. Luckily, there was a link to the original pattern and tutorial . A couple of days later, I had the perfect opportunity to make one for a friend as there was still some space in the envelope full of art work that my daughter intended to send to her.

We chose some green and blue fabrics (the friend’s favourite colours) , the green one is a piece of a so far untouched fat quarter that I had bought in a small shop in Oxford ages ago, the blue one you might actually recognise from the “designer dress”.

I was also very happy to finally get to use my kam snaps for the first time. I had bought them thinking they would be good for jersey but I was wrong. Anyway, they are definitely great for this kind of things. I find the purse rather cute and it is definitely a nice little something for the not so special occasion and it is most definitely the most useful thing the world has ever seen. And this is why I quickly made one for my husband as well. My children have already been complaining why I never make anything for daddy. So before starting the big project of a short sleeved raglan shirt for him, I made him a purse for coins or head phones or whatever in the colours of his two favourite footballl teams (for lack of neutral or manly fabrics). Oh the joy in his face when I presented it to him! I can’t even describe it! He didn’t even know what to say! Just what I had expected 😉 And I am almost certain that he keeps showing it off to his friends who are now all really jealous and want one too. What a successful little project!

The stripy fabric is actually a left over from a play pen cover I made years ago. And you will see it again very soon in a few blog posts about amazing dressing up things. So watch this space! 🙂

Scrap Sunday: The legging project

Posted on 23/08/2015 by atelieroursonne

I have this lovely, pretty and witty friend whose son decided a couple of months ago that he is not wearing trousers anymore. Ever. Under no circumstances. He wants to wear leggings just like his big sister. As these feelings seemed to be very strong, I my lovely friend went and bought leggings, sets of two to make sure that she wouldn’t get into trouble with the big one if the small one had suddenly nicer ones. As it turns out, pink or grey leggings are ok, black leggings aren’t, leggings with butterflies are ok, leggings with teeny tiny pleats at the hem aren’t. It is all rather complicated.

Suddenly it seemed like a good idea to give this pattydoo leggings pattern a go. Up until then I found it slightly pointless to make leggings myself. I did consider to make some out of a thicker material like sweat for the colder season as I know another person who things that trousers are not an option for girls whereas I think that at some point it gets too cold for leggings only. Even in England. I did adapt a fair bit to the English way of not dressing properly when it gets wet and cold but not all the way! If you put your feet under my table, you will wear trousers AND tights when you go outside in winter. And boots. And a hat… But ok, I live here since 8ish years, so I don’t have strong feelings about scarfs or gloves. But definitely trousers! Even if you are a girl! Ok, I am getting side-tracked. So back to leggings.

I still had a rather big piece of the dragon and knight fabric from the lovely shirt I made for the little boy and thought it would look rather interesting as leggings. Certainly something you don’t see very often. I was only a bit worried he might combine the two, which I think, would look a bit silly.

Rather cool, isn’t it.

Now, how about a picture of the boy wearing these? When wearing leggings he generally looks a bit like a 70s rock star. (I quote a friend here, sadly I did not come up with it myself, but it is true).

Well, as it turns out, there is no need for me to worry that he might go for the silly combination of dragon shirt and dragon leggings as obviously he doesn’t wear them at all. So no picture of them in action, sorry.

I also made a pair for my daughter. And they look rather cool too. At least that is what I think.

You might find them not tight enough for leggings. Well that was done on purpose. She is very skinny so I would have had to adapt the pattern but I decided to just go for the right size lengthwise as I thought the fabric might just last longer if it is not constantly stretched over the knees. And as it is a relatively expensive fabric, I would prefer if they last longer as the shop bought leggings.

So, I will definitely make a few more leggings in the future but I guess, it will be limited on the warmer versions which you can hardly find in shops. In that case, I guess it is worth the money.

Atelier Oursonne

handmade for you

Tag Archives: scrap fabric

Scrap Sunday: dressing up made easy… if not a little too easy

Scrap Sunday: authentic knight costume

Scrap Sunday: Origami Purse

Scrap Sunday: The legging project