Hello Dolly

For the last few weekends I've been dragged out of bed at some hideous hour, because someone in the toy cupboard; "doesn't have a THING to wear"

So I spend a couple of hours designing tiny couture out of scraps of  fabric left over from various costumes I've made before. The smiles I get make it so worthwhile and, as a former designer of real peoples fashion, it's actually kind of fun.

I don't have any patterns so these are basic designs (and I use that term loosely) where I rely heavily on stretch fabrics for the body and let the tulle, lace and trims do the rest.

This one above is a basic hour-glass shaped tube. I measured the length I needed (to cover Barbie's dignity) and added a centimeter (or 1/4") at the top to allow for hemming. I measured the dolls waist and drew onto the fabric the overall shape starting with a tube and nipping it in at around the middle to form the waist.

I sewed up both sides using a stretch stitch then folded over the top edge and because I used stretch velvet which notoriously rolls on raw edges, I pinned and hemmed it by hand.

I used a wide strip of netting - about 80cms (just over 31" ) long and gathered that on one long edge before sewing it (using stretch stitch) to the velvet tube's bottom raw edge.

To make the shawl collar, I used another strip, about 5cms (roughly 2") wide measured around the doll's shoulders to get the length. This I gathered by hand, at each short end, and hand stitched it to the bodice on the side seam at the top of the tube.

All the other trims I sewed by hand and I really just made it up as I went along using whatever I had at hand that looked pretty.

Below is another version of the same idea.  With this skirt I cut the length of netting longer and twice as wide, and folded it in half along the long edge before gathering it. This made the skirt fuller but a tad harder to sew onto the Lycra top.  The straps were cut from the selvedge edge and stitched on by hand.

I fell in love with this Dora doll, but she came dressed in a football outfit and I felt she was just too pretty for a sport uniform.

These two Ballerina's wanted to be Princesses according to She-Who-Worships-Pink. So I took an hour out of my weekend  to make basic elastic-waist skirts to slip under their tutus - problem solved.

I miss designing fashion, but not the hassles of running the wholesale and retail side of the business, and spending days on end developing and cutting patterns.

This little hobby is giving me a quick fix that's creative without eating up entire days like other creative sewing projects can.

And like I said the smiles I get are such a bonus.

KookaKaraoke

 

I am woken at five-am to a cacophony of bird-song. The bloody kookaburra's (North Shore's roosters) sound like they have microphone headsets hooked up to kick-arse rock-concert speakers.  At six-thirty the racket dies down and I'm just starting to relax into blissful sleep when I hear a bedroom door open down the hall - game over. <yawn>

An hour and a half later, when we should be walking out the door, I'm standing in the kitchen, measuring out a dose of Claritin. She-Who-Worships-Pink and Sneezes-A-Lot, is talking ten to the dozen, about why Orange Dog loves me more than her, and the chatter and questions are flying around the space like dust motes.

Then silence. I have the suspension syringe almost to the dog’s mouth.  

Pinkster's eyes grow wide- Buddy's are wider. I slap my forehead; ‘What the hell am I doing?’  I try to pretend nothing's wrong by adjusting my trajectory to move the syringe to my daughter’s mouth, but I’m not foolin’ anybody.  She takes about 4ml in before she bursts into laughter spraying us both in sticky antihistamine.

Pinkster can't stop laughing and the Orange dog just looks mighty relieved.  I glance at my watch, but I already know…we're late.  Again.

As we leave the house and I bang my head, for about the millionth time, getting into the car, I curse those bloody Kookaburras. It's all their fault.  I’m halfway out of the carport before I curse their feathery hides again, realising that I've forgotten the school bag.

Pinkster cannot stop laughing and I cannot stop muttering; "I'm a walking bloody, disaster" this morning". Pink shouts: "Mummy! You said Bloody!!". She finds this even more hilarious and it keeps her going until we pull up outside school.

Literally tumbling out of the car, she bails up some random school mum with a loud "EXCUSE ME!" She continues bellowing at the startled woman who is trying to herd her own kids through the throng, "MY MUMMY IS A WALKING DISASTER! SHE NEARLY GAVE BUDDY MY MEDICINE!!!"

The poor woman hasn't got a clue and she smiles vaguely, gives me a nod and quickly steers her kids away from us. Totally un-phased by her reluctant audience, Pinkster rushes into the playground to name-and- shame me a bit more at the top of her little lungs.

I wander in the school gates in a daze, as I often do lately, but today I'm also splattered with sticky stains and have particularly spectacular bags under my eyes.  It seems like someone hiked up the volume on everything this morning and I watch my excited offspring continue to bail people up and speak entirely in exclamation marks.

For the rest of that week the KookaKaraoke continues; from five to six-thirty am each morning. She-Who-Worships-Pink, struggles to take any medicine without dissolving into giggles. She also finds particular enjoyment in telling me "I'm a walking disaster" whenever she feels I need reminding.

Party Hats Of Death

For the uninitiated this line is from the movie "The Wild". Much maligned because it is a bit of a steal of Madagascar, but the soundtrack is great and Nigel has the BEST one liners. Anyway it's She-Who-Worships-Pink's favorite movie of all time thanks in no small part to Nigel the Koala (who oddly has a British accent).

So when we come to making party hats, they must be "PARTY HATS OF DEATH".

Because of our craft-obsession, the Pinkster and I save everything: bits of wool, ribbon, old un-sticky stickers, pretty stuff we pull off greeting cards, pipe-cleaners, feathers, you name it. I also regularly hit the $2 shops to stock up, and all of this stuff gets stored in old take-away containers in her desk for rainy weekends.

Old food containers are a regular save too and recently, after a trip to Cirque Du Soleil where they were selling very cute kid's top hats attached to head bands (for around $45), I started to look at these 2-Minute-Noodle tubs in a different light.


So today we convert a noodle tub (or you could use a clean take-away coffee cup) into a fabulous fabric top hat. You'll just need the following:

Fabric and trims of choice, regular craft glue, a glue gun, an old hairband, Styrofoam tub or cardboard cup and some tissue paper, if you're like me and you need to cut a pattern for absolutely everything. I  wrapped the tissue paper around our tub to cut a proper pattern, this way the curve is perfect and there are no gaps. Side-plates make excellent brim patterns.

If a picture paints a thousand words, I think I'll just let these do the talking:

pushing out the clipped curves

et voila!

Rubber bands are great for holding things in place till the glue takes hold

coffee mugs are also helpful making things stay put...

when the top piece and brim dries, it's time to apply the rest of the fabric

Lastly you'll need to up-end the hat and use the glue-gun to build up a thick glob of glue around the hairband in two places on the underside of the hat just above the brim.

And  here you have our end result: with a bit of tulle, some stick on earnings, scrap-booking stuff from the $2 shop. Oh and very special thanks to Nana for posting us the gorgeous butterflies to add to our crafting collection. The butterfly just 'makes' it, don't you think?

Now if you don't have a glue gun, you can make a simpler version of this hat using card and paint instead of fabric.  To keep the hat on, just make some holes at the base just above the brim,and thread these with hat elastic.

Alarming failures of a freaked out mum

Gaaaaah!

Major malfunction of the burglar alarm. The one we inherited with the house. The one we have never turned on. The one we don't even have on/off codes for.

 

An annoying intermittent BEEP has turned into a flat-out, full throttle SCREAMING WAIL over our heads. The Pinkster’s hands are clamped over her ears, the poor dog is going mad and Daddy Person is not home. I can't tell, in this cacophony of sound, if the poor dog is howling but you can see the suffering written all over his furry face and the tail curled up between his legs and pressed against his underbelly.

I call the number on the key pad- which has been long disconnected.

I pull the mains switch, the power goes off but not the alarm.

I pull the key pad off the wall and tear out the wires from the back for good measure. 

That doesn't work.

The front door is open, because I’m dashing in and out to the meter box, and the neighbours door on our party wall opens. Evidently not to offer assistance, just to let both their yapping dogs out front so they can add to the bedlam.

My loathing for the nasty old bat next door we call Mrs Bates, only increases with the noise of her stupid barking dogs, snapping their jaws at me through the wrought-iron fence as I check the electrical box again for a magic "alarm off" switch.

Inside I locate the screamer and dragging Pinksters high chair underneath I poke a screw driver into the centre which muffles the screaming. A bit.

Ah hah!

I jump down and back up again with the Philips-head screw driver and pliers. With my ears ringing and my little girl in the shadows hands still over her ears, I unscrew the screamer box and cut every wire attached to it.
Blessed silence.

Well the house is at least. The inside of my head is another story.

I wander around in the aftermath, inspecting my various acts of panicked vandalism. All the while sipping a 1200mg Aspro Clear cocktail and wondering what was keeping the rescue party. It's enough to give you a Cinderella Complex.

I wouldn’t say I have an aversion to independence, but just sometimes it would be nice that during a home-alone-emergency, that someone like Bruce Willis would pop his head in the door wearing a grubby white singlet and offer to solve the problem.

But in the absence of any heroes besides myself, dinner interrupted becomes bath time aborted, and I just give my baby some Paracetamol, as I dress her in her pyjamas. I wonder what, if anything I could give to the poor fur-person who has much more sensitive hearing than we do.

At four-am I am hanging out washing.

You see alarms are set at a pitch designed specifically to confuse, disorient and impair thinking. This is to confuse and disorient and impair would-be-burglars. I can safely say that it works. As I put my girl to bed, disoriented, confused and with a throbbing headache, we both forgot the toileting part of our nightly routine. My thinking was most definitely impaired.

So my poor lamb had her first night-time accident, since she discovered what toilets are for, and it was a biggie.

3am found me loading the washer and propping her mattress in front of the gas heater. At 4:30am after transferring her back to her own clean bed,I finally crawled into bed. My last thought before the fog in my brain descended was this:

Most people I know hit objects with a hammer when they want to kill them (in fact someone on Facebook suggested as much the next day) so what does it say about me that my first line of defense is always a Philips-head screwdriver?

Don’t you think that’s an odd choice for a female?

P.S. My sincere apologies to all those Edvard Munch fans out there for the increasing levels of digital vandalism I keep applying to his iconic painting. 

linking with Emily...

Old Dog : New Tricks

Some people teach their dogs 'tricks'- we teach ours 'chores'.

He will sit, stay, drop, come, drink from a sport bottle and snatch a Frizbee out of the air, over 2 meters high, with all the grace of a ballet dancer.

He can also spell the following words:

b.o.n.e

W.a.l.k

C.a.t

P.a.r.k

I just had to write a little post on our wonder-dog, who, with a little encouragement, has discovered the delights of pushing a broom around the yard.

While I'm stuck in bed with the flu, unable to sit in front of the computer for any lenghth of time, or finish any of my projects, it's just so nice to have a little extra help around the house. However, I cannot trust him to sort the washing (dogs are said to be colour-blind) and he's completely rubbish at stacking the dishwasher (something to do with a lack of opposable thumbs). 

I am still working out a way I can get him to push the wheelie bins out on Monday nights.

Have a great day & if someone's coughing nearby; turn the other way!

Giddyup!

WHO WANTS TO RIDE ON A HOBBY-HORSE WHEN YOU CAN RIDE A GIRAFFE?

 


She-Who-Worships-Pink had been galloping around the house with a broom calling giddy-up for weeks and though I’d seen various hobby horses in the toy stores at very reasonable prices, nothing really inspired me. Until I came upon this feller.

Now I have to warn you this is an easy project but it’s not a money saver if you do what I did and buy a beautiful big glove puppet imported from
The Puppet Company in the UK.   

In saying that, Uncle Pete's stores have them at around $25 so with the cost of a broom handle thrown in – it will cost about the same as your run-of-the-mill-boring-everyone’s-got-the-same-retail hobby-horse.

OK so here's what do you need:

Tools:

• a gimlet - for goodness sake get yourself one of these ASAP! Can’t live without one myself! It looks like an old fashioned corkscrew (fig. 1) and you can find them in any hardware store or $2 Shop. They are great for starting holes, (known to Tradies as "pilot' holes) or making screw holes  if you can’t be arsed messing about with the big drill.  Perfect for all kinds of little jobs.

What else:

• a screw driver
• one long thin screw about 3cms long
• and you will need a hand saw.

Materials:

• One long sleeved hand puppet (fig.2)
• A small dog leash – the sort you see on teeny tiny fluffy dogs – hit the $2 shops for that too.
• An old cushion insert – past it’s prime recycling stuffing is way preferable to landfill and it saves you a trip to your local fabric or craft store to buy the stuff
• A broom handle
• A needle and good strong thread

 

Step 1 – cut your broom handle down to a comfortable length for your small-person to ride on. Then cut another small piece of the left over no more than 4cms long.

Step 2 - using your gimlet, make a screw hole sideways through the smaller piece, then another hole in the top of the sawn end of the cut down broom handle. (fig. 3) Depending on how hard the timber is you may find the gimlet isn’t enough and you have to resort to the big brother drill.

Step 3 - screw the smaller piece of wood to the broom handle to make a T-bar (fig.4 ) – once the puppet is stuffed, this will act as a stopper so that the broom handle can’t easily be pulled out of the puppet and used as a weapon on smaller siblings or family pets.

Step 4 – firmly stuff the puppet head around the mussel, ears and head leaving room for the T-bar. Then push the T-bar into the head till it reaches the highest point of the head and pack stuffing firmly around that too. Pay particular attention to pack a good amount of stuffing around the back of the head behind the T-bar so that the head is well balanced on the broom handle.

Step 5 - Keep packing stuffing into the puppet turning it regularly so that it’s evenly around the broom handle. Do this until the puppet is firm and there is only about 3cms remaining till the bottom hem.

 

Step 6- cut a piece of the cushion outer fabric about the size of a mans handkerchief (fig. 5) and make a small hole in the centre. Push this onto the broom handle, and work it up the handle until it reaches the puppet hem. (fig. 6)Tuck this inside the puppet making sure all the stuffing is captured by the fabric.

    

Step 7. finishing: You need good strong thread here or to use four threads together like I have her (fig. 7). Use the thread to tack inside the hem creating a drawstring effect. 

Leaving about 4 cms of thread outside at the start, push the needle through inside the hem as far as you can, (fig. 8,9) then outside and back into the hem. Continue along until you get full circle. Take the two ends of thread and pull tight before tying off
(fig 10). Then stitch the ends into the hem and cut off the excess.

 

Step 8. Put the hand loop of the dog leash over the nose of the animal and feed the end of the leash over the head behind the ears returning under the chin. Use the clip to secure the other end place under the chin.

As I mentioned, the beautiful giraffe I used was a ‘long-sleeved glove puppet’ from The Puppet Company. I swear looking at their range, i'm tempted to make another, you know, just for guests ;0) If I had a boy I would make him a hobby-Rhino.


 You can buy these and many, many more gorgeous animals on line.:
 

puppetsbypost.com or directly from the link above they both deliver world wide.  Or get to your nearest Uncle Pete’s store and save a bundle on shipping.  I must say it was a real toss-up between the giraffe and the elephant I have to tell you. I may have to make another, you know, for guests...