New coasters

 Hello, everyone.  There is a growing list of projects in process.

Today I am sharing a coaster. The ITH outline is from Sew4Home, and the center design is one of the free OESD designs that came with my Hatch3 embroidery software. 

One of my Altar Society sisters is thinking of doing the Halloween treat thing called "booing" for various folks in the parish.

This little combo is simple, but elegant, and doesn't take a lot of time. (Don't ask how many thread changes, though!)

It's fun and I got to practice combining two different patterns. 

Update on the little ghosts

 Hello, everyone.

This is a small update on the cute little ghosties I mentioned the other day.

As y'all can see, they acquired a friend. He's a bat, also a freebie at Kreative Kiwi. He didn't come with eyes, but I thought he looked incomplete. Fortunately, in the bead stash there are some Czech seed beeds that go with the "Happy" letters.

I added little ribbon loops to each dangler and stapled them to a 3/8" black ribbon. The bat has two ribbons. 

I suppose that they could make a vertical door hanger if the ribbon arrangements were different...can't leave them outside in the weather for very long, though, as if it gets rainy the mold will attack the cotton fabric.

I wonder how they would look done in an outdoor type of fabric? One could skip the little pockets on the front--a door hanger wouldn't have any likelihood of having something tucked into the pockets. I only included them because my Sewing Club sister had done hers that way and it looks like little aprons or skirts to me--if the pockets weren't there there is room for a small BOO on even the little ghosts fronts. 

DD2 thought that the collection needed more bats...actually the bat pattern has different sizes of bats in it, some without the letters as the design is too small, others larger than this 5x7 one.

I was inspired by my Sewing Club sister's Show N Share

 Hello, everyone.

At our sewing club meeting, one of our group brought the cutest little ghost decorations. She mentioned that she had found the pattern at Kreative Kiwi. They were so cute I had to make some myself. (I had not removed the excess wash away stabilizer around the edges yet here.) 

The first little "ghostie" bag. I will add a loop to the top for hanging. This is the smaller size, and it uses up stash most amazingly.

This year's second Halloween costume

 Hello, everyone.

This year's Halloween fun for the little ones was a much shorter trick or treat experience than usual--though the three year old probably was ahead of the game with a short set of visits and then family dinner with the grands.

He wanted to be a flying dinosaur this year.

Using the Simplicity costume for bat wings and butterfly wings, adjusted for a wild guess that the bones of these critters probably showed from the front of the wing, and with safety dots added in the back. (Flying dinosaurs were probably road-colored as that would hide them from larger flying dinosaurs and prey they were trying to catch. At least, that's my theory and I'm sticking to it! 😊)The costume was built on a base of purchased tee and pants. They were in the exercise wear section at Target and are a little large for him, but he can wear them as play clothes for a while. Win!

The front, with tail draped over the hanger. (Tail just whipped up with a bit of low fill batting between two layers of the knit. Totally unnecessary tie strings--forgot the pants have elastic waste!) Wing folded back to show "bones" on one side. 

Base fabric for the set of wings was a suitably lizard-colored polyester knit. It stretched. But it was interfaced on both surfaces and was not completely impossible to work with. The bones were an applique. They were made from Kona cotton in a light gray. Heat n Bond Lite was used to stick them down to the front wing fabric, then a row of stitches was added to keep them there. (Being not at all confident that the Heat n Bond would stick well enough at a low enough temperature not to melt the main fabric, I went with the "belt and suspenders" theory of attachment.) I lengthened the back connecting panel and the inner edge of the wings, and used zebra-patterned fold-over elastic for the straps. Dispensed with fabric cover for the wrist loops and the straps, there was plenty going on already. And I ignored completely the idea in the instructions to hand close the wings after turning. (Come on, folks. You're kidding, right?) Instead I edge stitched around the wing with both stabilized the edge of the shape a bit and closed the hole. Much more satisfactory.

On the back, the safety dots. These are cut from one of the lovely reflective bits we had lying around to add to hiking poles and increase walker visibility on our hoped-for pilgrimage walk in Spain next year. (Via de la Plata, a fair amount of roadside walking seems to be on the way.) The sticker was stiff, but cut well enough with my paper scissors and stuck on nicely.

The rest of the costume shiny bits

 Hello, everyone.

The remaining shiny bits for the Sailor Moon costume are in recognizable order. All that is needed is to attach an elastic to the sides of the tiara so it will stay on.

The earrings are clip on. There is some wire wrapping going on there and some jump rings, plus the found clip-on backs.

The tiara gem is a little more complex than some of the illustrations, but I think she will like it. The elastic band will attach at the loops on the sides. 

The Mylar wrapping foil behaved this time, probably because it has gold tulle over the top. I sewed the tulle on at the back to pull the foil edges around to the back instead of trying to stitch it. (Gluing the edges didn't work, they were cut too close to the size of the tiara base structure.) The stitching of the accent rows along the edges went smoothly. The main gems are glued in place, the other accents are all sewn down. The little red bobbles at the top corners are seed beads.

Working towards Halloween

 Hello, everyone.

Halloween may be a bit different this year, but the children still enjoy dressing in costumes.

DGD expressed an interest in being Sailor Moon, an anime character in a cartoon series. The character is a schoolgirl in Japan, so her outfit is based around the typical Japanese girl's school clothes. That means a sailor (middy) blouse and a pleated skirt. 

Years ago I made a costume for DD2 of this type, but it's long gone to another relative and even if it were findable, DGD isn't the same size. So I'm doing it again.

This time I started with a purchased school girl outfit. Added a pair of red knee-high athletic socks for the "boots," and sewed a gem onto each one. (She is intended to wear the knee socks with her tennis shoes.) The sock gems can be removed later for normal wear.

That was the easy part. Next began the work on the gem for the bow, the tiara (no pictures of that yet), the ribbon choker, and so on.

The bow gem in progress. As there are a number of variations of the bow gem in various drawing of Sailor Moon, I used artistic license in designing something that has multiple colors around the central red element. A ring of the round gold beads was added after the photo. 

The back side of the bow gem, showing the pin back. The beads are sewn with Fireline 6 pound test crystal colored line. Yes, I have a fishing line cutter to cut it with, the braided nylon line will ruin your regular sewing scissors.

The ribbon choker. The ends have extender chain and a spring ring and are somewhat adjustable for size.

Many of the components are from stash: Mylar type gift wrap, round gold beads, stiff interfacing and felt, faux leather and pin back, etc. The small round gems were even in stash, though I had forgotten about them.

The larger, acrylic gems were from JoAnn's. 

The tiara is still under construction, with more of the stiff interfacing and Mylar and also some gold colored tulle, and more of the acrylic gems. Like the bow gem, there will probably be a line of gold beads around the top and bottom edges of the tiara. The plan is to have a strand of elastic to hold it in place when she wears it.