Hoot the Owl Halloween Costume

Z wants to dress up as an owl this Halloween. Not just any owl, but this owl - Hoot from the Old Bear and Friends videos.

This is a big deal for us because she went through a phase of being afraid of owls. Every night we had to assure her that no owls were in the room or hovering outside. We told her about all the friendly owls in all the stories and shows she likes, and she finally landed on this owl as the good owl.

So to make her costume, I had to improvise. The owl in the story is more lambswool than feathers, and wears a blue starry dress/apron throughout. I thought it would be better to make it more owly. And more comfortable for a little girl to bounce around and enjoy herself.

Over the months of owl reassuring, I became a big connoisseur of owls. I found a blogs about owls (My Owl Barn is a great aggregater of owls) and sewed owls and generally found myself drawn to anything with an owl on it. Which turns out to be a lot of things.

I started with a long sleeved white shirt and a pair of white leggings. Then I attached felt feathers (a sort of "u" shape) for the owl tummy. These were sewn on, but with a very simple basting stitch that will be easy to remove when she wants to stop being an owl.

The feathers were meant to be in concentric circles, but imperfect ones. It works like an attached bib.

  
Next I cut some wings from an old sheet. These were based on the ones in this tutorial because I thought the shape was just beautiful.

The wings were sewn together with an opening at the neck for turning, and pinked up to make them lay nicely. Then I turned them inside out (being a white sheet, there weren't right sides) and pressed them, sewed the neck shut, and sewed the tops of the back part of the wings together.

The ensemble mid-feathering

I could only find white leggings with lace edging in my short search, but thought a few feathers placed at the cuff would cover that fine.

The wings presented a problem because I wanted them to be more owl than fairy and that meant feathers. I saw this owl cartoon and thought three tiers of feathers on the wings would work out well.
 

First I cut some longer feathers - an elongated "U" really.

Then I placed them in three rows and sewed them down at their base with the machine. This gives them a bit of swing when the wings move.

Last I made a mask, a piece of paper folded in half with a big circle for the eye and a triangle for the ear made a pattern. I used brown buttons as the centers of the eye to be more like Hoot. I knew Z wouldn't want to actually wear the mask, so I attached the mask (with a safety pin) to a white hat she had.

And the final owl having fun. She kept the hat on for about 20 minutes and refused to have the wings attached to her arms because they "flapped better" free. Everybody thought she was dressed as an angel, which was funny. 

Snap Wrap Kimono Style Dress Part 2

After a brief regrouping from constructing the dress, I started drawing. I thought flowers would be nice, and then cherry blossoms. I got stuck on cherry blossoms pretty quickly.

I've never used fabric paint before, but it was on sale and I am a complete sucker for a sale. Also the images of cherry blossoms I liked the most were painted ones, so it worked. Now, cherry blossoms are one of the more forgiving things anybody can draw. They are easy to recreate - simplicity and beauty, what more could I ask for?

The idea of decorating the dress was to draw attention away from my sewing mishaps.

I only used 2 colors (pink and black) of fabric paint to keep it simple, and kept the pictures I liked close by for reference.

First I squirted the paint directly from the bottle in some lines - some longer lines and then a few shorter lines.

The brush lines appealed to me more than the squirted lines, so I used a paint brush to smooth them down. That's just my preference, and isn't necessary for nice cherry blossoms.

Then I put pink dots at the end of each branch. That's it. Lines and dots. Some of the dots got smushed together to make flower shapes.

And the end result? Well my model went on strike so it was not the end.

I had a chance to look at the whole thing, often trouble.  I added some darker pink acrylic, which probably won't last through washing. And then...

I cut several small circles of tulle, which I snapped up at one point to make a tutu - whenever she gets into tutus. I layered three circles and sewed them together to add to the blossoms

And ta da!

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Snap Wrap Kimono Style Dress Part 1

Months ago, I made this dress for Z. It's a kimono style dress that pulls over her head instead of wrapping around. It's a pretty good play dress. And I thought it was so clever.

Some time later I fell in love with and made a Snap Wrap Dress from Prudent Baby. It is not only a great looking dress, it's easy to get on. Little Z hates getting dressed and I appreciate anything that makes the task of clothing her easier. However, the dress is not always suitable for our weather, which is mostly foggy with a chance of heavy fog. With the optimism of not knowing what I was getting into, I decided to make a snap wrap kimono dress. And by make, I mean make up from the cobbled tutorials of others. Not realizing that this was simply a kimono dress - a pattern that's been around for probably a thousand years or so.

Below is how I made the dress borrowing from some great tutorials. If you want a simpler kimono, Habitual made this lovely one. The end result is still a kimono dress, which I made rather overly complicated. It's sort of funny when I remember thinking it was going to be the greatest dress ever.



I started with making the pattern on some paper recaptured after our last art co-op. For some reason the kids did not spill much paint all over the paper we cover the tables with and it felt wrong to just chuck it. I've seen this method of getting a basic pattern on several sites. Using a shirt (or dress) that fits, I traced it onto the paper and then added some length because it's going to be a dress. I also tried diligently to follow along when ikatbag had a series of tutorials on drafting patterns. I think some of it stuck as I bravely/foolishly attempted a 3/4 sleeve. Z likes to stick her hands into everything and her cuffs are always getting ... well ... icky.


The I traced the full front and the back of the shirt on the fold. The process for this is amazingly well spelled out on Craftiness is Not Optional here. The idea is to get two almost full front pieces to wrap around.



The fabric I chose for this is a stretchy knit which should be good for playing and is in a color I love (I like purple). It is challenging fabric as seen by the curling at either end.


I do not have a serger. Frankly I am intimidated by them. I've read a lot about sewing knits. I like knits. I got out the ball point needle and trudged forward. I also hate my sewing machine. The machine knows this, and it doesn't help our relationship. The manufacturer knows this, because I've gone to them asking for help. I bought it due to some very good reviews, only to find that it has the worst tension problems I've ever dealt with. The kind people at the Brother corporation told me to always set the tension to 5 and make sure I'm threading it right. I'm going to chuck it out a window and get a machine I like as soon as I can. Anyway, at some point in every project I throw in the towel and just hand sew the rest. I like hand sewing and find it therapeutic.

This was a good day with it.


I like sewing in the sleeves this way because I admit to a lot of trouble getting them to work. Most of the things I make for Z are sleeveless because of that. I saw this method and thought it would end my troubles. And keep a little girl's arms warm.


Sew the shoulder seams first. Pin and sew sleeve in place.


Then sew the side seam and sleeve seam in a straight shot. I lined up the seams where the sleeves meet the body at the underarm.


This is where it was to get some style in the form of bias tape. In this case stretchy knit bias tape because I'm a glutton for punishment. And I thought it would look nice.

I was wrong. The combination of stretchy material and stretchy bias tape gave me a sort of warped neckline. It is easy on the neck as it is soft, but it doesn't look wonderful.

Z also seemed a bit small for the dress (not that I made it too big) and less than thrilled with wearing it. So I decided to spend her nap reworking it by first adding a panel to help the neckline. I am sure this is bad sewing form, but it did help. And I'd already ripped out and replaced the bias tape.

 

And then I decided it could work if I made it snazzier. 

Now, Z will wear this dress and not care because she's two and clothes are just something mom makes her wear. The next steps are simply to make me happy with the dress.

So back to the drawing board...

And onto part 2. >>