Ember Costumes and Crafts

He's been played with and worn a lot, so he's a little beat up.  The head is made from five 8x8 squares of foamboard that I cut with an exacto knife and hot glued together. This was very messy and the foamboard wanted to warp, so I did a little bit of filling in gaps with the hot glue and then painting over it. The black squares of the eyes I cut out for eye-holes.  After they were glue together, I used a ruler and drew a 1 inch square grid on each side Inside, I glued a piece of foam to the underside of the top piece to get it to the right height for his eye-holes, and then two pieces of foam where his nose rests. The elastic strap keeps the head from sliding around while he's wearing it. 

Angela and John as Ukyo and Ryoga from Ranma 1/2, plus Nick in a Party City Spider-Man suit. Way back in 2001, John and I were in middle school. We had loved Sailor Moon and Pokemon for years by then, and through our local comic book shop and our friends, we started watching other anime like Ranma 1/2 and Tenchi and Inuyasha. We LOVED it! We wanted to dress up as our favorite characters for Halloween, and for Austin's very first anime convention, Ushi-con!  Back then we didn't have Youtube or costume tutorial websites or anything. We were on our own. So we found an old Singer sewing machine at a garage sale (which was so wonky that we needed channel-lock pliers every time we wanted to wind up a new bobbin) got our parents to take us to Hobby Lobby for fabric, and we taught ourselves to sew! We didn't know how to use patterns, so we did a combination of modeling off of our own clothes and draping and pinning things on ourselves. We were very determined! We made o...

Link and a little fairy!  So there's a story behind this tunic...last October John's work was having a costume contest, and because it was just work and not a con or something, John ordered a tunic from China on ebay for super cheap. When it arrived, we saw why exactly you shouldn't order a costume from China on ebay for super cheap. It was child sized (even though he ordered men's medium!) the design was just laser-cut stickers barely sticking to the fabric, and the material was really thin.  So with a week until Halloween, John and I made a new one. He bought some nice heavy bright blue cotton twill, I whipped it up into a tunic, and he hand-stitched thin white bias tape into the design you see below. I think it turned out pretty good! Needless to say, with his accessories and his little fairy companion, he won the costume contest at work and at our friend's Halloween party. Because we're just extra that way.    Homemade leather sword st...

Gunnar and I took our kiddos to the Sherwood Forest Faire this past weekend and it was...COLD! The forecast said it would be in the 50's, which means longsleeves and light jackets, but it was actually in the 40s and so windy that we were all frozen! I nearly bailed and had us all leave after an hour. I'm pretty tough, and I was wearing a hoodie and my fleece cloak,but I was still freezing cold. James lay huddled under three blankets in the stroller and got mad when I uncovered his face to make sure he could breathe. Baby girl's hands were red little ice cubes even though we kept shoving them back under the blankets or into our armpits while we held her. Gunnar was had it the worst, since he forgot half of his costume and his jacket at the house. He wrapped a blanket around himself, borrowed one of the boy's hats, and bought some leather gloves. But we made it! We stuck to the back part of the Faire where there was less wind, the adults each had a pick-me-up of...

This isn't my best work, I'll admit. I was on a time crunch and committed to using things only from my fabric stash. The thing that saves this dress is that my niece is wearing and it and she makes everything look adorable. Too adorable not to post. It is two pieces, the white under-dress and the lacy blue over-dress. I think I might be able to make something more authentic (or even just more on-theme, because I'm no SCA member over here) for the next girl who is big enough to wear this dress using this as a jumping off point. But it did use up some of my stash, it was comfy and cute for my niece to wear, and I can always improve it. I drafted the pattern myself and got to practice making small person sized outfits. The back of the over-dress ties in the back with a white ribbon. Maybe I should add laces? That's my son  Jack in the background wearing a borrowed cloak and a robin hood hat as a makeshift costume. I was pregnant at the time, that's my ex...

             Jack is obsessed with sharks, in case you didn't know. He insisted on being a shark for Halloween, but unfortunately we could not find a shark costume at any of the three Halloween stores we went to. Cue mama to take out my dusty sewing machine and get to work! I used blue and white fleece, some black fabric paint for the eyes and gills, some stuffing for the fin, and a long zipper up the side to help him get it on and off. The pattern is of my own spur-of-the-moment design, inspired by  " Left Shark " of course, from that infamous Katy Perry Superbowl show.

Gee, it's been a while huh? Well I'm going to go ahead and try to catch up a bit and post a few of the things we've done over the past few years in the upcoming weeks as I scrounge my hard drive for photos. Dread Pirate Roberts  This is from March of 2016, made for the Scarborough Fair in Central Texas. There's not a whole lot to it, but did draft this little pirate shirt from scratch by looking at one of Jack's 4T dress shirts! I've made so many of these renfair/pirate shirts by now that I could probably do it in my sleep. (Did I make an actual pattern for it? No. No I did not. Sorry!) The tiny version went together in just a few hours out of leftover grown-up fabric. It's a very nice black linen. The mask is some thick felt I had lying around, attached with bit of elastic and the bandana was a freebie from long long ago.The tie is some suede lacing that I bought a whole spool of after continuously running out of lacing.  John cut a quick bel...

This year Gunnar and I went to the Renfair as a date, after leaving the kiddo with his grandparents for the day.  Gunnar wore a mishmash of old costume bits that were lying around my parent's house including the first (terrible!) undershirt I ever made many years ago and John's gray wool tabard. My costume came together nicely for being 24 weeks pregnant, considering that it wasn't intended to be worn while pregnant! The top is a crossover reversible bodice in dark purple faux suede, only half-laced up, and then I pulled the matching skirt up to create an empire waist over the gaping top and bulging bump. The underdress is the same one I wore under my fairy outfit a in 2011, the hat I bought last year at the fair, and the boots were a wonderful estate sale find! It was a wonderful relaxing day with gorgeous Texas winter weather. I didn't even need to wear the hooded cloak I made and brought just-in-case. More on that later!

Despite a rough week, I managed to make Gandalf and Bilbo costumes for Gunnar and Jack! G is a huge LOTR fan and is currently reading through all of the histories, so when I offered to make him a Gandalf costume, he was ecstatic.  For Bilbo, since the outfit was so small, I used scraps from previous costumes to make an undershirt, vest, and cape. I drafted my own patterns based on some of Jack's T2 sized church clothes. The ears are earmuff-style stuffed ears made from felt and attached to a headband and the feet are costume hair just stuck onto Jack's feet with spirit gum. (He thought that they were bugs at first and was wigged out, but we managed to convince him that they were "like fuzzy socks.") For Gandalf I dyed my stash of estate-sale $1 sheets gray and then threw together a robe (gathered at the front and back for volume) and mantle, then used the scraps to cover a cheapo black witch hat in a patchworky style. A costume...

 Check out that awesome hand-tooled breatsplate! Also, I bought a Robin Hood hat because I've been wanting one for years!

This costume took me 14 hours to make! I used cotton flannel in purple and mottled green, and drafted my own pattern based on 12 month sized pajamas. (It was actually too small around the thighs at first so I had to add a crotch panel.) The tail and head crest are stuffed with polyfill. It closes with a zipper which runs up the right side seam and curves to the collar. The hood is attached. Whew! Jack was such a good sport and wore it ALL DAY at the convention with no problems. I'm glad that I decided on flannel because it wasn't too hot like fleece would have been but it wasn't too thin and flimsy like a cotton print might have been. I've already washed it three times and it's holding up great! I will try to upload a pattern or basic sketch of how I made it in the future. Let me know if you want it!

Here's the best group shot of everyone!! Left to right is Gunnar as a Diamond Dog, Jack as Spike, Angela as Rarity, Nicole as Rainbow Dash, Tiffany as Pinkie Pie, and Zach as Discord WE ROCK!!!! Details on individual costumes to come!

So this weekend my friends came down to visit me in San Antonio and we all went to San Japan! It was my first time at SJ and I was really impressed with how clean and classy it was as a whole, and how nice all of the costumes were. It was also a GREAT space that didn't feel crowded at all. Friday night Alli and Amy came down from Austin and we stayed up ALL night making their costumes. They were the pony princesses Celestia and Luna. For Amy's outfit we draped black satin over a dark blue dress and tied it with a silver obi from Japan. Alli's dress was draped and sewn by me out of white jersey and poly-satin, with gold ribbon trim and then I tied an obi around the waist. Alli made the headresses and tails out of strips of tulle. Amy's crown is craft foam and the wings are craft felt and floral wire (More on that later). We ran out of time so they don't have ears or horns and Alli doesn't have a crown, but that should be fixed before Brony-con in Austin n...