essence of sisterhood

costuming for 1854

A honest-to-goodness sewing post, that hasn't happened for like forever.  But yes, with only one construction picture.  Basically, this was a churn-it-off-the-line-so-it's-ready-for-dress-rehearsal-project.These are the two costumes I made for the girls.  Each has a dress, apron, handkerchief, and lil white lacy pants.And yes, they actually use these handkerchiefs in the play.  The aprons have little pockets to store the handkerchiefs in so the girls won't loose them---very easy to do when you are eight or ten.  (And when you are fourteen or fifteen---I did it in a play once.  I went on and realized my handkerchief was backstage.)I didn't use a pattern for the dresses, just the girls' measurements.  I did loosely base the pattern for their lil pants on a pajama pants pattern.  The aprons and handkerchiefs also were no-patterned, obviously.  I've also used elastic for the lil pants and put invisible zippers up the backs of their dresses.  Yeah, obviously I didn't do the historical research... hey, research can be saved for my term paper!   =)  You'll notice fitting issues on both girls; these were really slap-dash projects!  But from the audience in a kiddie play, I don't think anyone will notice anything.Roo is the one in the pink dress, obviously.  Both girls have the same pattern of calico for their dresses, and the same ginham for their aprons, just in different colors. These are designed to complement eachother when on stage.Roo's friend's lil pants turned out too short to be fashionable for the time period, garh.  Actually her whole outfit turned out a bit short.  Except for the apron.  =PRoo.The dresses are a bit big because the girls need growing space.  The brown calico dress like this I made for Roo doesn't fit, so I oversized this time.  Or, at least tried to oversize.  Over all it worked well enough.

I LOVE MY LITTLE SISTER...

...she eats whatever I won't when I'm dieting.  Which is 99.9% of the time.  Guess who ate the rest of this tortilla?

And sewing again...?

So I have two circa-1854 dresses to make.  Luckily for little girls though.  Little girls=almost no fitting.  Which is cool.  Because I only have ten days to make them in.  (Fabric washing right now). 

Luckily I've done one of these dresses before, which means I have some experience... I've didn't use a pattern then, and I'm not using one now.  I DO, however, put a zipper down the back of the dress.  These dresses are for use in a play, so zippers=quick=win.

I have absolutely no pictures.  Yet.  Which makes for a pretty poor post, don't you agree?

so much to say

I know, I haven't posted for ten days.  Ten days!  But I've been worse than this before, and trust me, I do love some of these pics.  Now this one here... this captures so much, in a bit of camera and computer space. These are from when we got a cat or skunk or something in our garage... never figured out if it was actually in there... And yes, my lovely mum is in these!  Horray, now you bloggie people are actually meeting my family.... lil sister roo in the foreground.This picture also captures a lot of my bro and sis.... it's very them.  Except for the vampire circles under wes' eyes... dunno where those came from...me.  As for me myself, I've been pondering my novel and practicing for cross-country next fall.  No, I'm not crazy!  It's tons of fun.  I'm not that good yet...Roo and I's feet.  Even our feet tell so much about us.  She's obviously the one in the speedo sandals, her being a swimmer, and I'm the one with the battered rainbows.....No, I haven't been sewing lately (just haven't been inspired in that department!) but I have been helping my mum with the cooking.  Here's several components of my ten-topping salad (it went over really well, I suppose, being that no one called the cheese 'rubber' or elsewise....)...And bread.  You know you've seem my bread lumps before, as they were about to be made pizzas at my sis' b-day party.  Bread dough makes excellent buns, too, a recipe I've made up with some of my mum's favorite bread recipe and a few smatterings of fillings.Balloons are lovely things.  They were meant to go home with the kids after the birthday party, but quite frankly we forgot to do so.  So they've been floating around our family room, the strings tangling everywhere, until my 10-year-old brother snapped all the ribbons everywhere.  Now they're like shiny, pretty red beetles floating on our ceiling.  I don't know how to name the effect they give.