Hi.

Welcome to my blog. I mainly post about my sewing projects, as I’m building a colourful and comfortable everyday wardrobe suitable for a working mum of primary school children. I really love African wax fabric, so that features heavily. I also occassionally post about family life in Edinburgh and travel. Hope you have a nice stay!

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DIY kids spider costume

DIY kids spider costume

Ellis had outgrown his old halloween costumes so I made him a spider one! The basic idea of this is inspired by my friend Helen (we also previously copied her bat costume!) but Ellis is very opinionated on what he wants, so picked bits and pieces together from various photos.

I’ve written it up as a tutorial in case it’s of use to anyone!

You will need:

  • a black zip up hoodie

  • black fabric

  • white and black felt

  • toy stuffing material (a small bag is enough, ask me how I know)

  • thick thread or thin ribbon

  • some paper

Steps:

Eyes

  1. Cut out circles of different sizes in the white felt, and smaller circles in the black

  2. Sew the black circles to the white ones to make the eyes

  3. Sew the eyes to the top of the hoodie near the front and close together

Legs

  1. Measure the length of the sleeves of the hoodie from the seam, and the width of the sleeves in the middle

  2. On the paper, draw a rectangle of those dimensions (length by width), and add seam allowance (I added 1.5 cms) on three of the sides. Curve one of the ends off as shown below

  3. Cut this piece out of the fabric, on the fold, four times

  4. Sew the four legs together along the long/curved edge, with right sides together. Leave open at the short straight end.

  5. Turn the legs inside out and stuff with the stuffing material, making sure to leave a few cms of unstuffed fabric at the end

  6. Sew together the short straight edge, with two parallel lines oif stitching about 1.5cms apart. This gives you a flat bit for sewing onto the hoodie

  7. Sew the legs onto the hoodie at the side seam with the flat closure bit on the back of the hoodie. Spread the legs out evenly between the hoodie sleeves and the bottom edge of the hoodie

  8. Attach the thread or ribbon from the end of the hoodie sleeve to the end of the top leg, and from the top leg to the bottom leg, ion both sides.

Wear with black bottome and shoes. That’s it!

French Navy Patterns Stellan tee number 2 - orange and white flowers

French Navy Patterns Stellan tee number 2 - orange and white flowers

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French Navy Patterns Stellan Tee