All my homemade gifts are now (as of yesterday) sewn and given (or ready for delivery). There has been pretty intense work in the sewing department for the last month or so. I have plenty to share but I'll start with this one because its really fun. :)
My two girls drew the names of two relatives for a kids exchange. These gifts won't actually be physically gifted until New Years Day but as the recipients are ages 5, 3, and 1 its a pretty safe bet that they won't be reading this blog. Any parents who see this will just have to act surprised on New Years Day for the sake of the kiddos.
I had a few different ideas for kid gifts floating around long before Christmas but had settled on making superhero capes. Fun, huh? What kid wouldn't love a superhero cape?! My girls each have one in the dress up bin and they get a fair amount of use. So I was all set on making capes and Little Miss Leah says, "But Mom, the gifts are supposed to be from me and Grace, not from you. Can't I make something myself?" Talk about making me proud - not only is it not on her radar screen that we could go out and buy something at a store, but she wants to make the gift herself. So, we kicked around a few ideas and she decided she wanted to make her exchange recipient (a 5 year old girl) a doll.
Leah and Grace have these, which they really like (click on the link to see a previous version of the doll). I have made a few improvements on them over time (most notably they got fresh and better hair after all the hair in those old photos fell out, and the dolls are no longer naked - we've made them a few dresses each) and this time around I figured out how to make one a girl. So, without further ado, here are Leah and Grace's homemade dolls:
On the left is a 'boy policeman doll' from Grace to a 3 year old boy. On the right is a 'princess doll' from Leah to a 5 year old girl.
Obviously, I sewed the dolls and the hair and drew the faces. The girls helped with stuffing, chose the hair colors/styles, and closely supervised everything I did while making them, handing me pins and whatnot. I forgot to take a picture of the naked dolls before I turned the girls loose with the fabric markers. I think they did a mighty nice job. Leah's princess even has a necklace with a clasp on the back and buttons all down the back of her dress. The girls are proud of their dolls and I am proud that they wanted to gift handmade.
However, I still wanted to make superhero capes. How dare the girls rob me of my opportunity to make superhero capes? :) So, I made them anyway. I had planned to embellish them with names (SuperName on the back) but I let that go in the interest of simplicity, time available to sew, and its supposed to be a smallish non-extravagent gift exchange and I didn't want to go too over the top.
Five year old girl gets gold (chosen by Leah):
Three year old boy get green (chosen by Grace from my stash - old Christmas dress fabric):
And because the 5 year old girl and the 3 year old boy happen to be siblings, and happen to have a 1 year old brother who may feel left out once they get home and start playing superheroes (poor guy), we made a red one too, slightly smaller and also made from old Christmas dress leftovers :
Now that you've seen how cute they are, here are a couple of things I'd like to point out. One serious and a few hilarious (to me anyway).
First, the pattern for the superhero capes originally came from somewhere online. I made my girls capes from that pattern. It worked alright. However, I was never really happy with the shoulder/wrap around/velcro part of that pattern. So for these, I reworked the pattern using skills that I have learned in the last month or so from my adventures in pattern drafting for clothing. Since I haven't blogged about those adventures yet, I will spare you the details but the upshot is that I love the new knowledge/skills and I think they will come in really handy in lots of different ways. (I am trying to learn about drafting clothes patterns from scratch so that I can sew myself modest clothes - and one of the first times I apply that knowledge turns out to be in superhero capes for kids. Who would have thought?! ) For now, just please take note of how nicely the shoulder part of the capes fits their shoulders and lays nicely. If I remember later, I'll contrast the old capes with the new ones so you can see what I mean.
Now for the funny stuff. I might as well start off by saying that the girls spend lots of time at our house in varying states of dress-up-ness. Grace spends at least half her time these days in a Hello Kitty leotard with a ballerina tutu on top. This particular day we had been playing out in the snow earlier in the day, so Leah was still wearing some of my big tall boot socks around the house. We've been playing outside a lot lately so she's been wearing them a lot indoors and I never noticed when we were taking the superhero cape pictures. However, now that I see them in the photos I can't keep from laughing out loud because I think it looks like she was trying to have SuperHero Socks on. SuperGrover's Utility Sock, anyone? :) They are even all slumped down and goofy looking like Grover's. Sheesh. And then in photo number three, our Clown-Otherwise-Known-As-Grace started doing 'up up and away' actions to go with the capes. (Note the ballerina slippers on that one...)
So, thats part of the fun thats been happening around here! Stay tuned for more homemade gifts and the start of my adventures in pattern drafting coming soon...
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