Halloween Town Kairi, 2011

I use to have a friend that was a Kingdom Hearts fanatic. She was obsessed with Sora and his friends and it was always her dream to make all of his outfits and to someday get a big group together to play his friends and have outfits that matched his.

I was the designated Kairi for the Western states; the other was in Florida. I was inspired to make a Halloween Town Kairi. I admit, I had ulterior motives in hoping that this would inspire her and others from our group to make costumes and we'd have something for next year.

I didn't really have a lot of time last October to really make a costume. I was busy with Anime Banzai. But I did have in my possession a skirt and top that were given to me for a gift that were perfect for what I wanted to accomplish. I searched through my accessories box and found a lot of gloves and tights and various other decorations to pull this outfit together.

Halloween was over by the time I got it done and the local corn maze was close, but not yet harvested. My photographer and I went out and shot some pictures in the field before it got plowed under.

The hat was the only thing I made. I bought black craft foam and had to make a couple of attempts at drawing the perfect heart shape. I cut out two and trimmed one to be a little smaller and painted it purple with blue and black. I used the mask of Sora's Halloween Town costume as a reference for the face. I used purple ribbon for a trim and glued everything onto a witch hat I found at a crafts store.

Halloween, 2011

All for one and one for all! For Halloween 2011, I had three nephews and my family wanted to do the Musketeers; nephews and their dads. Now, my family and I live where it can get really cold in October if it wanted to. When I first was talking to my sisters about making tunics for their boys, their main concern was how to keep the boys warm. I came up with a solution to sew pieces into the sides and make it more of a big shirt; that way, the boys could wear sweaters and not get cold. They loved the idea, but I then had to figure out a way to make it work.

I made the tunics first and sent them to a friend to get them embroidered. When they got back, I found a shirt and sleeve pattern and altered them to just be strips with sleeves and then I sewed them to the tunics. Voila!

And the boys were so cute as the Musketeers and their dads were looking awesome as "evil" Musketeers.

Ordon Village Link, 2011

I love Legend of Zelda; it is my all time favorite video game series. Twilight Princess isn't my all time favorite, but it was a new way to approach the story of what people are already use too. I fell in love with the art of the game. I wanted to Princess Zelda, but I lacked the time and skill. I saw a lot of pictures of people doing Hero Link and I thought about doing that, but I didn't want to be like everybody else. I went back to the game and I saw what Link was wearing while he was in the village and knew that was going to be the costume I was going to do.

The costume itself was fairly simple: a tunic, pants, sashes, an apron and a sleeve. The apron was my first attempt at quilting and I didn't do too badly. I was pleased with how well it turned out and everybody who saw me in it was really amazed. This costume makes me very optimistic about future Zelda projects that I want to do.

This one is my favorite.

Christmas, 2010

Alright. Christmas time! Christmas for 2010 was fun. I decided to take on a huge endeavor and wanted to make a Toothless stuffed animal from Dreamworks "How to Train Your Dragon". I didn't want to go buy a toy from a store, because they were either (1) out of stock or (2) just poor quality and not very cute.

I made my own pattern, but I have moved several times and have seemed to have lost everything. I was so busy in trying to get this gift done in time, I wasn't smart enough to take pictures or scan anything into a computer. Back then, I also didn't have much access to a computer. I remembered to get pictures of the finished product.

The pictures are a bit dark, so I'll give the schematics: in the end, Toothless final measurements were 2 1/2 feet from nose to tail and the wing span was 3 1/2 feet all the way across. There isn't any cross bones on the Toothless' tail, but I wanted to make it specialized for my nephew and he likes pirates. For my first prototype, it didn't turn out too bad and my nephew was two at the time and he loved it anyway.

My older brother is really good with his hands and has built his own wood shop in his garage. He builds side projects whenever he has the time and the products turn out really great. He has an apron that he wears while working that he has had for years and it was starting to look a little worn, so I thought I would make my brother a new one. One day while he was out, I nabbed his apron and made a pattern so I knew what I was working with. I used a canvas like material because its durable and can take a beating. I asked a friend who has a embroidery machine and asked her to embroider his name and shop name onto the apron and pockets. He was excited and pleased with the end result.

My dad was a truck driver and was always on the road. We, his children, decided that we should make a gift that he could take with him and remind him of home. As spur of the moment, we decided to make a quilt using his favorite colors and print our pictures on it. I was in charge of assembling the quilt. I spent hours cutting out squares and debating the best pattern. This was the one I ended up liking the most.

Now, we were told that my dad wasn't going to be home for Christmas, so this project wasn't the top of my list of things to get done. Then out of the blue, and by some Christmas miracle, Dad was coming home. I went from a time of having three extra days after Christmas to a meer 48 hours before Christmas. Luckily for me, I had the patches sewn together and passed it on to my sister-in-law to get the pictures printed onto the white squares. It was then brought back to me to finish and I stayed up all night, the day before Christmas, finishing the quilt. I was tired and groggy and a bit cranky, but it was done and it looked amazing.

Harry Potter (2010)

So these entries are no longer done in any particular order. I wanted to go by year that I started to actually GET INTO costumes and such, but I just don't have all pictures that I need. So I'm just writing the entries as I go. This one is on a costume that I did for my nephew. My sister-in-law is really into Harry Potter and Ethan went through a phase where he was too. My first Halloween costume I ever did for him was Harry Potter. I've never made clothing for children before and I was super apprehensive about this. Excited, because I love my nephews and this was the first time (I think) that my brother and wife requested something from me, but had absolutely NO idea how I was suppose to accomplish this.

 Now, my oldest nephew is a little big for his age; meaning he can sometimes be mistaken to be a couple years older than he really is due to his size. I took a wild stab and went out and bought a children's robe pattern and cotton. (My nephew can also be a little rough on his clothes and cotton is easy to wash).  I cut out the smallest size and left it a little long, but when I went out to measure it too him, width wise, it was fine (its a robe, they're suppose to be big and loose). But length wise, its was too LONG!  By two feet.  And here I thought I cut it out precisely to his height.

I didn't get a picture of the robe before I fixed it, but here are a few at the final sizing.  Ethan loved it, if you can't tell.

Ethan on Halloween.

Alohomora!

The both of us.

Considering that this was my first child's costume, I didn't do too bad.  It was a simple enough pattern.  And, it's big enough, so if Ethan or his brother, or his cousins wish to wear it, they can; although, I'm sure I'm going to end up making robes for all of them to wear TOGETHER.