Dress-up Box- Things for Little Royal Heads

So a little girl has to have some princess stuff to dress up
in. Mothers I know tell me that almost all little girls go
through a Princess phase. Since I have three little girls,
I imagine we're going to be hosting royal balls and parties
for a long, long time. Emily has a few Disney princess
dress-up items in her current stash and a plastic tiara from
a neighbor friend. Everything else she improvises.


So I sewed her some things to wear on her head
to help her imagination along:

A medieval princess hat

a felt tiara

and a bunch of felt crowns.

They have a short bit of elastic at the back to accommodate
both girls' heads. The elastic is encased in a variety of fabrics
- Thai silk, velour, satin - anything royal-ish.
The tiara is similarly adjustable.

These Waldorf-style felt crowns are all over the internet
- I used the pattern from this tutorial but modified it so
there'd be more crown and less elastic.

Jenna was kind enough to model the crowns for me one
day when Emily was in preschool. It is risky not to be able
to try the finished product on the girls to be sure of the fit.
But they sat nicely on Jenna's head with a little room to
spare so I think they'll be fine for Emily, too.

But I digress.

Unlike all those other Waldorf-style felt crowns on
the internet, these are not all 100% wool felt. I used what I
had at home and some (the felt my grandmother left me)
were wool, and the rest weren't. Yes, I could tell the
difference, particularly in the quality of the top-stitching:
But otherwise even the regular felt worked quite well.

I made extras for Christmas gifts, and not just for girls,
so some had buttons

and others had gems and trim.

The buttons and gems had to be hand-sewn onto
the finished crowns, so I did that at night, curled up
on the sofa while the husband read the papers.

I made nine in all, some to keep and some to give.

I went a little mad with the colors- can you tell?

Dress-up Box - Abracadabra!

A magician's top hat, wand and cloak.

The wand is a wooden dowel painted

with acrylic paint and varnish.

The top hat is double-layered felt

stiffened with interfacing.

It also has a secret compartment

- a very-obviously false bottom

so small magicians can pull all sorts of things out of it

and hide little friends inside that might want to make

grand appearances during their act

I think some little magicians might also enjoy doing little

tricks with their playsilks, but if they want something

with a little more glitz, there are these one-yard pieces of

metallic-sheen fabric. I thought of sewing one into a cloak

but that would leave less to the imagination, no?

Dress-up Box - Dance Skirts

Ah, it is good to be back home after being away for

Thanksgiving. We all missed our beds. I did not miss cooking,

because food cooked by other people just always tastes

better. Now we miss the family we'd just left to come home.

But we will see them again at Christmas, which, because

Thanksgiving was so late this year, is not all that long off.

Here are some sheer dance skirts that will go into the girls'

Dress-up Box. These chiffony fabrics were on sale after

Halloween, so I bought a yard of each and made full circular

skirts in different colors and lengths.

Circular skirts cut from fabric with square corners leave a
fair bit of remnant, so the scraps became four fairy skirts

with five different-colored panels each. Emily's Halloween

costume also left some sizable remnant pieces so they

became pink-and-sparkle skirts.

Here is a hastily taken picture of the fairy and pink skirts,

carelessly tossed on our deck. I wish the pictures could

have shown them modeled by human wearers but they

are supposed to be a secret afterall. Alas.

Real dance skirts have ties for waist adjustment but these

are for little girls who are learning to dress on their own.

So I used FOE (fold-over elastic) for the waistbands and it

made very quick work of the eleven skirts. The serging of the

edges, though, took a while - I used embroidery thread and

that kept breaking. Thank goodness for sergers, but

how maddening to have to keep rethreading!

Seven of these skirts will go into the Box and the other

four will find new homes with some other little girls.

I didn't have time to make a tutorial on this, but it is really

nothing more than cutting a large donut-shaped piece of

fabric, serging the outer circular edge and sewing FOE on

the inner circular edge. Here's an FOE tutorial that I didn't

actually use (I only watched it after I'd finished the skirts)

but that is very helpful.

Recent Acquisitions

Disclaimer: this post is full of very poorly-lit photos. Sorry.

Stocked up again this week!

First, art materials. An art supply store was closing down and 

having a liquidation sale. So of course I had to go. By the time 

I got there, though, a lot of the really good stuff was gone. 

There was a full rack of art markers all at half price but I had 

the two younger kids with me so I didn't dare browse. I left 

with some entry-level oil pastels to replace the dried up bits 

I'd had since childhood.

When Christmas is over and we hunker down for that long 

frigid stretch before Spring, I should probably put aside 

sewing for a while to work on more art (and I use that term 

very loosely) for our very bare walls.

Next, fabric - but of course.

My first online purchase.

I much prefer the physical store experience but oilcloth 

was hard to find in stores. Plus, I didn't even know what 

oil cloth looked like. So many blogger folks are in love 

with it so I thought I'd buy some just to see what 

it was all about.

Hmmm. Plasticky. But soft. 

What in the world am I going to make from it? Still, that 

question has never stopped me hoarding fabric, so I'm 

not worried.

Some wool felt, in doll-skin colors. 

Again another miracle fabric that had captured the hearts 

of crafty folk everywhere. So I went and procured some on sale. 

Nice. And an extremely familiar texture. 

Came home and discovered that I had a large bag of 

remnants of this, in multiple colors, from when my 

grandmother used to make softies. Fun! So that's what it 

was called! Some of those remnants still retain the shapes 

where she'd cut animal heads and bodies years ago. 

Got a bit sentimental.

And some miscellaneous ribbon.

The Measuring Lady at the fabric store recognized me, 

unfortunately. She said, "I know you! You come a lot." 

Sigh - she doesn't know the half of it. I used to just 

be obsessed. Now I am also notorious. 

Dress-up Box - Ribbon Rings

Here's another prop that's in the Dress-Up Box - a ribbon ring/

ribbon loop/ring with streamers. I'm sure it has a proper name

but I don't know what it is.

Anyway, it's one of those things that toddlers in music-and-movement

classes hold and wave about as they experience rhythm and motion.

Like Emily at one of the outdoor summer activities organized by the

city's parks and recreation department:

They can be bought but they can be made for less. Plus, they are a

good way to use up the odd remnants in one's ribbon stash.

And because they were so simple and fast to make, here's a tutorial.

What you need:

• 1 yard of each ribbon, all of the same width, and at least 1" wide. Satin is a nice choice but it's more expensive. I used 1" grosgrain because it was what I had a lot of. They tend to be heavier and less floaty than the thin polyester streamers the commercial ribbon rings come with but they still swish about nicely.
  
• 11" of nylon strap - the sort that duffle bags come with. The width of the strap should be twice that of the ribbon. Mine was 2".
  
• Candle or other open flame
  
• Sewing machine

Step 1

• Light the candle.
  
• Take one ribbon and singe one end to prevent fraying. To do this, hold the end about an inch above the flame as shown. Move it horizontally sideways so that the flame singes the entire width. If nothing happens, lower the ribbon edge slightly and repeat. If the end melts and distorts, you're too close! Snip off the bad bit and start again.
  
• Repeat for all the ribbons. Remember, you are going to singe only one end - these will be the exposed ends of the ribbon-streamers. The other end of each ribbon will be tucked into the strap-loop and doesn't need to be singed.

Step 2

• Repeat this for the nylon strap, but singe both ends.
  

Step 3

• Now find all the un-singed (i.e. still fraying) ends of the ribbons and stack them together as shown.
  

Step 4

• Sew a line of stitching about half an inch from the end to secure them together.
  

Step 5

• Take the nylon strap and fold it in half lengthwise. You may need to hold it down and press hard on the crease to make it stay folded.
  

Step 6

• Sew a line of stitches close to the open edge to secure it in folded position permanently.
• Backstitch on both ends.
  

You now have a double-thickness, half-width nylon strap.

It doesn't matter if it's slightly curved -

it will straighten itself out in the next step.

Step 7

• Fold the sewn strap in half to make a loop.
  

Step 8

• Take the sewn end of the ribbon stack.
  
• Insert it 3/4" deep between the ends of the loop.
  

Step 9

• Lay this "sandwich" flat and sew a square of stitching to secure it. In the picture below, the white square shows where to sew. Make the square (or rectangle) long enough so that the fraying edges of the ribbons are enclosed within the square (or rectangle).
  

A (not as useful as I'd hoped) close-up to show the stitches.

And you're done!

I'm guessing that it is possible to use fabric stiffened with interfacing

to make the strap, in place of the nylon strap. However, I like the

nylon strap because it is malleable and keeps it shape - it can be

pressed out long and flat so that it's like a stick, or opened up

in a loop for little hands to hold.

You could also use a cotton strap - it holds its shape just as well

but you can't singe it to prevent fraying.

You'd have to serge the edges or use bias tape.

The completed ribbon ring/loop.

The Christmas Project - Work in Progress

So here we go - the big Christmas Project. It's big because it has

many, many parts. The final product itself probably won't take up

a lot of space - so much of it is just fabric anyway. Still, something

that will take me several months to complete, given my level of

(im)patience counts as big.

But I'd better hurry up already and say what it is and stop

blathering on about size and whatnot.

It's a dress-up box for the girls.

Erm, actually, they already have a dress-up box.

But it's a collection of random dress-up things, stuffed

higgledy-piggledy into a storage tub, including some cracked and
crushed plasticky stuff. They've served Emily well over

the past year or two, but I'd always wanted the girls to have something

open-ended that left lots of room for their imaginations. And I'd hoped

to give them beautiful things with interesting and rich textures that

they would enjoy the feel of.

I also decided it would be fun to have people follow along with this

work in progress as it evolves, rather than do a foolishly massive post

around Christmas if when it is all complete. And perhaps if anyone is

interested in putting one of these together for their own little ones,

they might decide that dress-up things can be made.

Yes, made! Not only bought!

The challenge, of course, is doing it all in secret for several months so

the recipients of said box are successfully left in the dark till Christmas.

Enough!

Here's the first of what's going into the Dress-Up Box,

and it's a no-sewing project, incidentally.

Playsilks!

The 30" x 30" white silk scarves came from here although if I were

still in Singapore, I'd probably head off to Arab Street or Yue Hwa

in Chinatown for some. They were dyed with Kool-Aid and vinegar

in Tropicana OJ cartons in the microwave oven. There are many

tutorials out there but I used the excellent one by Anna at

Three Sneaky Bugs. Stop reading this now, click on the link and go

visit her - you'll immediately feel the urge to make some of your own.

Here are the pouches that will be their home.

They are lurid fleece on the outside and black satin inside,

with ribbon drawstrings.

Sorry - OK, the pouches are sewn. It's just the silks that aren't.

The larger one will stay with us and house the 9 scarves and the

smaller one will go to another pair of girls we love - I had so much fun

dyeing the scarves that I made a few more for them.

These playsilks are going to be good open-ended playthings for the

kids - anything from capes, cloaks, picnic blankets, the sea, the sky,

doll bedlinen, dance props... Or even for just the tactile experience-

who doesn't love the feel of silk? Yum.

More box innards to come. And a tutorial (easy, I promise)!