Sutures & Sandpaper: Book Week 2014

As is typical for me, I left Book Week sewing to the last possible minutes. Really, that last minute. Book Week was on a Thursday, my last day off was Tuesday and I spent the day making Sethan's costume. Then Wednesday night after work I made Xander's costume. I was going to make Eloise an Elsa costume (she's been asking for a while) but in the end she got to wear the princes dress I made for the Scalloped Princess Dress Pattern Tour. Linda made a cute workman costume for Griffin.

I'll start with Sethan's ensemble. I let him chose his character and he chose the captain from Pirates Love Underpants. The picture to the right of him is of the book cover.

(sorry for the terrible late night mobile phone photo)

So I started to trawl my favourite PDF sites for a new jacket pattern as none of the ones I had would have worked. I settled on the Desmond Jacket (from Shwin Designs). It was close but not quite what I wanted, so I did some redrafting.... I lengthened it by 3" and changed the shape of the bottom of the front. I also wanted the back to have a split so I cut the back pieces as two separate pieces and added a seam allowance and changed the construction somewhat. The the biggest change was to the front lining pieces. I wanted the lining to look like the one in the picture so I redrafted both of the front lining pieces. Then, for the lapels I added binding strips as I constructed it. Oh, and I drafted the sleeve cuffs and applied binding in the same way as the lapels and stitched them in between the outer and lining parts of the sleeves and folded them up.

(another terrible phone photo)

For the striped pants Seth chose the fabric and I made my "go to" pants pattern the Small Fry Skinny Jeans from Titchy Threads. I made them with a few shortcuts (I skipped the flat felled seams and just overlocked the seams and topstitched them down. I made them with half fly (no zip) and omitted the pockets and belt loops. I added a little loop of 1/4" elastic in the side seam between the pants and the waist band for his sword. They were very quick to make and, as usual, the fit was fabulous!

Linda made the gold underpants trophy for Sethy and I'm pretty sure it was his favourite part of the whole costume.

Xander had to be a puppy as his class were performing a poem on stage about puppies. To make it even more limiting my little man is "too old" for a full puppy suit. I offered to make a cool puppy costume but he was reluctant to get that dressed up. We compromised with a zip up hoodie made of dalmation spotted fur with ears on the hood. He and Linda made a wooden bone to carry. His was a quick sew.

I have made Dragon Vests for the kids before (about a year and a half ago) and when we were planning this I immediately thought it would be the way to go. Unfortunately I have had some computer issues and my older computer is out of action. Long story short I did not have my copy of the pattern!! I messaged Annalisa from Purperita and she responded immediately with a new email of the pattern. Her friendly and prompt service is AMAZING!!