What's on the back?

After a bit of thought, and in order to avoid a plain white back, I decided to go for the music option.  And given the previous request for 'Twinkle Twinkle Little Star' (and the fact that it's quite easy music) went for that.

I found the music for it on google and then drew it in pencil by hand on the back of the pillow case.  Then I measured out the size of the black notes and cut 12 circles out of a black shirt which was being thrown out.  After sticking those on I drew over the rest of the pencil with black fabric pen.  It's a bit squashed towards the end but doesn't look too bad.  I was going to try doing some fancy font wording as well but ended up writing the words by hand in pencil then writing over them in pen when I was happy that they fitted.

I also tidied up the neck and arm holes using iron-on mending tape bought from John Lewis.  Unfortunately I didn't buy enough so only managed to do the neck and one arm!

Update - went out and bought another roll of mending tape and have now finished off the other arm.  So apart from a a few stitches on the arms and neck (and possibly extending the neck a bit as it's quite difficult to get over the head at the moment!) I think we're pretty much finished.  

Roll-on Thursday when the costume has to be worn!

Music!

Still enjoying my creative triumph of the ketchup bottle, another email came from school, saying that next week is non-uniform day with a musical theme.  Pupils can go as their favourite music star or as something musical.  My son wanted to go as a music star - but at 4, the only example of a music star he came up with was 'twinkle twinkle'!

So thinking caps on again to come up with something easy, cheap and recognisable to a bunch of 4 and 5 year olds.  We're a fairly musical family but I couldn't see how I could make a violin or french horn easily and cheaply.  But we do have a piano which the children love to plonk on regularly.  So the germ of my idea is to do something piano-like.

The trusty white pillow cases have come out again - at this rate, we'll run out of 'old' ones and need to buy some new ones specially!

So far, I've printed off a picture of the piano keyboard from the internet and used it to judge key size and placing.

I marked out the keyboard in pencil and then cut a card template from an old folder for the black keys.

I used the template to cut out 12 black keys from an old M&S black t-shirt.  Then I used the trusty fabric glue again to stick the black keys into the right place.

After that, I used the black fabric pen to draw in the rest of the keyboard shape.


And the last thing I've done so far is to cut out a hole for the neck and arms.


Next step - to finish the arms and neck holes so they don't tear or fray.  I've also been toying with the idea of something on the back - maybe some music?  I've also tried to think of relevant headgear- which I think makes a fancy dress costume - but in this case, I can't think of anything.

So that's where I'm up to.  More to follow over the next few days!

Food? A bottle of tomato ketchup of course!

But then an idea started to take shape. What was our boy's favourite food? Tomato ketchup. And we'd said many times that he'd turn into ketchup if he ate so much! So perhaps we should make this come true.

So here it is - tomato ketchup bottle in a few fairly easy steps.

I started with a piece of red fabric - cut from an old table cloth that was destined for recycling.  My limited machine sewing skills were put to the test with hemming around the edges and then the sewing machine broke down so that was it for mechanical help!

I had some old ribbon (can't remember where from) which matched fairly well so that became 4 ties at the sides.

Then I cut a hole for the neck at the top.  I'm no good at edging either so I had to use another bit of ribbon at the top to cover up the jagged edges and try to reinforce the neck - luckily this also looked a bit like the neck label on the bottle!  But I cut it all too big so it kept slipping off his shoulders - sort of solved by use of a bit of velcro.

The hard bit was the label - I found some good images of Heinz ketchup bottles on the web so printed one off large and copied the basic design by hand in pencil on an old white pillow case.  Then one of my friends suggested fabric pens so I went out and bought 4 colours - red, yellow, green and black.  I also used them on the neck label.

With my confidence up, I decided to have a go at the back label too:

Ingredients, nutritional info etc all done in squiggles!

Having broken the sewing machine, I then used fabric glue to stick the front and back labels onto the red material - use sparingly as it shows through if the material is thin and you use too much!












For the important final touch - the bottle lid:

A plain shower cap - but do you know how hard it is to get a plain shower cap without blue/green patterns, dolphins, fish etc on it; and getting a white one was even more difficult so this was cream-ish and from Tesco.

The fabric pen was useful again, to write on the lid stuff which was copied from a bottle in our local cafe!



So all we needed now was a red hoodie underneath (which we already had) and plain trousers.

He loved it - and no-one else had the same costume at school!!

Where it all began

My son, aged 4, came home from school a couple of weeks after starting, with a note saying he needed to come in fancy dress the next week. The theme - food. School helpfully said he could be a chef or a waiter or anything at all related to food.

Where to start? Spend a load of money on buying a costume which he'd only wear once? Cobble something together to make a chef or waiter costume from normal clothes? Or attempt something creative?

I should say here that I am not remotely creative - I was rubbish at art at school, don't draw or paint and my sewing skills aren't up to much (although I do have an old sewing machine which my Mum gave me during my Cath Kidston/domestic goddess phase but which I'd barely used since). But I am ever so slightly competitive and didn't want my little boy to look out of place!

So I needed to find something that would be easy to make, look ok, and something he could bear wearing all day. Beyond that, no idea! A google search proved to be of little help - lots of Americans doing fancy things for Halloween and patterns, templates and the like for amazing creations. Nothing for a novice sewer with few ideas.