Fairy Wings

The little flower fairy dress is now 100% complete. Here are the wings, made out of wrapping paper. They sort of stuck out at a nicer angle when they showed them on the pattern envelope, but since I didn't want to string wire through them (3 year old child running around with protruding wires just didn't seem to be a wise idea) this will have to do.

I promise to get pictures of the adorable fairy herself, but I'm waiting to deliver the costume until we're closer to Halloween. Reason #1 is if I were a 3 year old girl, I would put this on and never want to take it off until NEXT Halloween. Reason #2 is I don't want it to get out around the office that I'm sewing Halloween costumes. While I would be willing to hire out, I don't think most people would want to actually pay my fee (whatever that would be) on top of an already healthy-sized fabric/pattern bill.

Anyway, I don't think my next project will be the Tudor dress. As much as I would like it to be, I am, alas, without a fabric budget this month. Since my mother managed to snag a new civil war pattern (top left) for me during JoAnn's 99 cent Simplicity pattern sale, I think I'll try to pick up the civil war day dress project again. The fabric is ready to go, and all I would need is to find some cotton muslin/lining material wich is very inexpensive.

Bippity, Boppity, Boo!

What happens when one has entirely too much time on one's hands?? You finish the project that was suppose to keep you entertained for the next month in one weekend. Wrapping paper wings still to come, though.

One of the biggest challenges on this project was dealing with the various fabrics I had purchased. The sequins on the purple fabric have been glued on. Every time the needle ran through a sequin, some glue residue would coat the the needle. Then the thread would start sticking to the needle, and would break. This sometimes happened every 3 inches. It drove me crazy. Below is the leaf collar: this process involved several broken thread crises.
The nice pinkish fabric and the green organza would ravel if you looked at them funny. A lot of the edges in this costume were left raw and were not finished...which caused problems. I solved this by using fray check.

Another source of frustration was attaching the skirt to the bodice. The skirt is several layers. First, you attach 10 petals to the bodice, and it looks like this:

After this, you cut three ENORMOUS skirt panels - a good two times taller then I am for a child-sized dress. Then I did the same with purple tuile. Then, I sewed the skirt and tuile together, and gathered it to fit the bodice. There was so much fabric, I had to gather it up as much as possbile for it to fit. Then there was the problem of attaching this massive skirt to the waistline. This picture tries to give you an idea of big it was: I had a hard time getting the fabric to fit under the sewing machine foot.

I think my favorite part of the costume is the adorable little flower petals hat, complete with a stem. It went together without a fuss, and I think is should look absolutely adorable!

Fairy update

I've been having fun sewing some over the long weekend. It gives me time to finish the project...and keeps me from getting bored as well.

I finished the small jumper/panties set that goes underneath the almost transparent fairy costume. I went ahead and then started on the bodice and sash. Since I got to see the little girl on Friday night, I took the jumper and tried it on to make sure I had the right size. It was a great fit, and she seemed to really like it, or at least I assume she liked it since she didn't want to take it off.