Monday, January 11, 2010

Back in October ....

... Charlotte decided that her sixth birthday party would be an homage to Spirit : Stallion of the Cimarron. I modified a simple fleece balaclava pattern from Anne-Mette Hermansen's so-useful book Happy Hats & Cool Caps: To Sew for the Whole Family by adding horse ears & inserting yarn along the back seam:


(There was a reason why the little horses were riding stick horses, but it only made sense if you were six.)

I made tails by making large, simple tassles & pinning them onto party guests' pants. These were less successful; several just fell apart. But they lasted through the party, at least.

I don't know what traditions are elsewhere, but around here when your child has a birthday party, they receive presents from the guests and hand out "goodie bags" full of edible treats and junky toys of dubious amusement value. I don't like to pass them out and I don't like to have my kids bring them home -- the contents are usually junky but the cost adds up surprisingly quickly. So whenever possible I like to make something that our party guests can take home & play with later. The horse hats seemed just right this year.

Charlotte's birthday is only a week before Halloween, so as soon as I finished the horse hats I moved right on to make George's mummy costume:


(This is his favorite lurching undead pose.)

Here it is with the headpiece:


It's made of strips of muslin, sewn and/or hot glued to a pair of pajamas. (My sister made a costume like this on a sweatsuit base, but she lives in a colder part of the country.) The headpiece is built on a balaclava with the nose bit cut out.

It was a hugely successful costume, and very durable, too -- George spent a lot of the evening hiding under one of the cars, then "rising from the dead" as trick or treaters passed by, and the costume showed hardly any wear & tear at all.

Given the amount of sewing her party had required, I was kind of pleased that Charlotte decided the PERFECT costume was a $6 Target witch outfit:

3 comments:

Leigh said...

Hi Cynthia, your blog looks familiar though it must have been awhile since I last visited (?). I wanted to drop by and thank you for the tomato comment. Bummer!

The birthday party looks super! Just what I would have loved when I was a little girl.

Caroline M said...

I will remember the mummy costume but I have less chance to use horses heads.

Will it be Christmas knitting soon?

Sara said...

Hi Cynthia;

I followed the links from your comment on my blog (no other way to respond to blogger comments): Version 2.0 of Dyebook One will have fewer samples, and nothing new that Version One does not have, so you will miss nothing. We will try to make it fit into one binder, instead of two.....deciding what to eliminate is the issue.
Thanks for you comment,
Sara:
lambspin at gmail dot com