So Freaking Cute!

 
Tonight was the night.  And I cried like a baby from act one. The Big Gala Dance Recital, in a venue of intimidating size, was fully booked and we had taken two of the last few seats in "the stalls' - front row but up near the rafters (next time, I'll book the day tickets go on sale).

But oh the cuteness of it all, toddlers skippy-tippy-toeing on stage in sparkly tutu's. Some of them working through the simple choreography, some of them just standing still, scanning the dark audience for family, and looking so adorable you could just die.

Our evening began right after school with the make-up application.  We were given instructions on what to apply, what colors etc, but have you ever tried to apply eyeliner and lipstick to a child under 6-years-old?

This is Pinkster getting into my make-up on her own. That is charcoal eyeliner going on to her cheeks and lips - very Goth..

Forget eyeliner; I used mascara on an applicator but it ended up about 3mm under her eyes. I was instructed to also apply pink on her cheeks and red lipstick.
After she'd chewed and picked off all her dress rehearsal lipstick, this time I brought out the big guns with Maybelline's 24-hour-lipstick which I also smeared on her cheeks. I can tell you now that wriggly giggly lips and fire engine red indelible lipstick don't work well together. Put that together with the spectacularly bad application of mascara (attempted eyeliner too) and you achieve something that resembles the face of a severely vision impaired Drag-Queen.

Well turns out  it wasn't too bad from a distance, in fact all those smudges just made her eyes and lips pop-out! (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

Then I was fishing around for something to throw on over her leotard and tights. Importantly something that wouldn't need to be pulled over her hair which was not very well glued with hairspray. I came up with this little pinafore that only took an afternoon to make:

 
It's  my own Bettina Liano style pinafore. The design is very basic, its easy-peasy to sew together, but the heavy gold top-stitch (like you find on jeans) just adds a bit of style. The press fasteners make for super-quick changes (as in-pull it open and drop it on the floor) so it turned out to be a perfect performers cover-up.

I actually made her the baker-boy cap above out of the scraps of this dress, and they look uber-chic together.
But not tonight - no sireee - not on that freshly lacquered and already-starting-to-unravel hair!

Well after several acts of varying degrees of expertise and complex choreography She Who Worships Pink came out with the other oh so many more than Seven Dwarfs.
She put her all into it.
So much so her hat fell off.

My hats don't fall off - unless you hang upside down from monkey bars.

But like a pro Pinkster kept going; smiling, holding or adjusting her hat as she marched, danced and sang. It was quite a feat considering the hat was sliding about more than she'd been doing during her makeup session.

What can I say, the Mr Frenchie and I were proud enough to burst.

PS I'll  add some photos of this Pinafore in action soon, I just need to take some of her actually in it, so check back  later if you'd like to see it on a model.  :0)

A Mad Hatter

There's something to be said about school uniforms in that you can seriously cut back, not only on clothes, but accessories too.

I still need to come to terms with that.

I don't know what our little Pinkster has more of; shoes or hats. But I know this, after putting clusters of hooks inside both her wardrobe doors, I still couldn't accommodate all of her hats.

It all started with one special hat. I loved it, The Daddy Person loved it and The Pinkster loved it. So we continued up-sizing, as she grew, until the sad day Pumpkin Patch stopped making them.

Seriously who could  blame a parent for getting besotted with this look?

I just couldn't deal with the loss of all that cuteness not to mention style and comfort. So I copied it. Apologies to Pumpkin Patch, but what was I to do?

So for five years I have played around with this little baker-boy cap. It's been done in blue denim, black denim, tan corduroy, pink corduroy, white faux fur; just to name a few.

What I most like is that after I've made her a dress or jacket I can throw together a quick hat with the left overs.  I designed her a black denim pinafore with contrast top-stitch detail (inspired by Bettina Liano circa 1990) and...
 

 
...I had just enough black denim left over for the hat. I didn't have enough for the band though, so I used a strip of 'pleather', which turned out to look like a well-planned design detail.

Pumpkin Patch started making their Baker boy caps again after taking a couple of years' holiday from that style but I prefer my own now.

This plain denim one (above) was my prototype and it saw her through two years of daycare and all seasons. Then one day it was lost and she was distraught.

I had no denim and no old jeans on hand so I went to Vinnies (St Vincent de Paul) and bought a pair of second hand jeans.

This was my first 'cut-up couture' venture and the old jeans set me back $12!!!!

Outrageous huh?! it's not like they were vintage Levis or anything!!

Anyway I'm sure you always wondered what a $12-second-hand-jeans-cut-up-hat would look like:

The original hat turned up a week later in the beach bag :0/

So now we have two denim hats and I still have more than enough denim to make another one.  Problem is you only get one fob-pocket per jeans and that detail is what gets all the 'oohs and ahhhs' on this one.

The cute little belt above the brim is actually a coverup as the band wouldn't sit well enough for the likes of my perfectionism.  Gathering and easing heavy denim into a thinner band is no tea party I can tell you, but add in a few more layers with studs on the brim and it's pretty tough to get it all perfectly flat.

The corduroy cap below was much easier being softer fabric. For all the brims I used stiffening hard enough to make a lampshade and that's a lot of fun to feed through a clunky domestic sewing machine (not!).

I wont do a tutorial on this because I'm guessing only seasoned sewers would attempt it, and you don't need the likes of me telling you how to put something like this together.

However I am willing to let you have a copy of my pattern above to fit a 52- 55cm (20" - 21 1/2") head size. Click here to download my A4 PDF pattern to print and cut out, or click here to request the pattern by email. It doesn't look like a store bought pattern but it works like one.  If you are handy with a sewing machine you could whip one of these up in say and hour; hour and a half.

So that's it for the 'stuff I made portion' of the rodeo this week, enjoy your weekend. :0)