the kids - halloween edition

Posting these very late due to a whirlwind of activity this weekend.

Pumpkin carving on Friday.

Some of us needed help from Auntie Trish, who is visiting this weekend.

What the child who will not let me sew Halloween costumes for him anymore wore. He trick-or-treats with the guys now too.

Stopping at the home of our new friend Mrs. B (for Bemused).

Hours have been devoted to fabric organization this weekend. Those great finds had to go somewhere. If all goes well, I should be able to post some photos of a newly cleaned craft area (or at least parts of it) later this week.

In the meantime, Trish is still here and we're off to the store with the following list:

light pull chain

headphones

Hello Kitty band-aids

flat iron

black socks

spiders

sock monkey!

Can you see her sneaking a piece of candy before we even started out?

In keeping with sock monkey tradition, this was a "use what I have" costume. Every item in it down to the zipper came out of the stash.

Not much else to say, I just love looking at that little bum.

sugar plum fairy

I had the glue gun going up til the time we had to leave the house, but her costume was done in time for trick-or-treating.

She even agreed that she looked more like a sugar plum fairy than an angel. And she was happy about it. (Letting her wear some silvery eye shadow, hair glitter and lipstick may have helped there.)

The yards and yards of lilac lace were out of my Grandma Bev's stash (thanks Bev!). The wings are an old pair that used to go with a Tinkerbell costume. I ripped off the already torn nylon and replaced it with the lilac lace. The silver leaves were in a bag of craft supplies I got at a thrift shop.

There were a lot of leaves...

See what I mean. The little rosebuds were in another bag of junk I thrifted.

Put together, I think it all turned out pretty spectacular. She definitely worked it.

About 30 seconds after eating the last piece of candy we allowed for the evening she asked how many days there were til Christmas.

guest halloween crafter

The kids are counting down the days until Auntie Trish arrives for her annual Halloween visit. According to Ellie, we have two sleeps to go. I don't have the heart to tell her that Trish's flight doesn't arrive until after she's begun the third sleep.

Trish may not be as nuts about Halloween as we are, but she's certainly in the spirit. She sent me some crafty photos just in time to post and buy me another day of costume sewing.

Her mantel tableau:

My realm is fabric - Trish's is paper as evidenced by her cute banner.

I love these mini pumpkins with their sashes.

This pretty much says it all...

I'll post costumes at some point on Friday. More garage sale goodness tomorrow.

countdown to halloween quilt

Will someone please tell me what happened to October? Between doing costumes for the show Glenn is involved in, Halloween costumes for the girls, two birthday/Halloween parties, preparing models for the next round of classes at the shop, sewing for the shop's open house... Uncle!

I'm still squeezing in time to sew things I want to make, in addition to what I'm supposed to make, but I can't seem to find a good time to check other blogs I like to follow or even keep up with e-mail. Even sewing has become a last minute type of activity around here. I'd cut out the pieces for this quilt in early September, hoping it would be ready by the beginning of October. Hah. It's almost funny to think how optimistic I was when cutting all those little squares.

The pattern is from Simple Fabric Folding for Halloween by Liz Aneloski (C&T Publishing). I've adjusted the pattern to include 30 pockets instead of the 25 she included. Thirty just makes more sense to me with there being 31 days in the month.

The finished size is about 16X36. The spiderweb is a tight machine satin stitch in metallic silver thread. I even used a piece of fabric from the garage sale to back the whole thing. This is part of my effort to keep her unused stash from becoming my unused stash.

The orange squares above are actually folded pieces of fabric with eyelets at the points. The points hang loose from the quilt so you can do this:

How cute is that? Obviously, this didn't get done in time for a Halloween countdown. Instead, I used it at Trixie's spooky birthday party last Thursday for game prizes.

Need proof this was last minute? Look carefully at the top. Isn't everyone using binder clips to hang their quilts these days?

ellie's invitations

Ellie decided that she wanted a "Spooky Halloween Birthday Party" this year even if it meant waiting a month after her actual birthday to have it.

Invitations were sent out.

The paper is brown kraft stuff that I bought at Paper Source in Chicago years ago. The stamps I used were sent to me by Carol and are from the Martha Stewart line at Michael's. The paper is held together by a spider ring and the candy was from Target.

Both were popped into a small (size 1) bag that had been stamped and was sewn shut with a zig zag stitch at it's widest and longest setting. (Yes, this meant hand delivery.) The bags are from a restaurant supply store. You'll want to pick something you'll use a lot because they're sold in packs of 250 or 500. I've had them so long now I can't remember how many I started with.

I sewed favor bags that'll do double duty as trick-or-treat bags on the big day. Ellie wrote out her friends' names after I stamped the tags. (The cat stamp is an old one from Stampin' Up.)

Inside we put a pencil, notepad and pencil topper stamp. The kids each got a mini pumpkin when they were out after playing hot pumpkin (same as hot potato, but with mini gourds). The skeleton was a chenille stem craft we all did at the beginning of the party while waiting for everyone to arrive. Flashlights were the prize at the end of a scavenger hunt. She's eaten the candy she got as prizes for other games.

Tomorrow, pictures of some of the games.

halloween apron

pattern: Butterick 4945 view C

(If you hate to hand finish stuff, skip this pattern.)

fabric: Moda Halloween prints from last year (same fabric as the placemats I made)

Bring on the trick-or-treaters. We're ready for them.

thrifty thursday

Found at the Salvation Army Thrift Store for $.45 each. New cords were added from Michael's Crafts. They're the kind you put in little holiday houses.

15 days to go!

black cats who lunch

I got to use my newly made Halloween placemats with a lady who lunches yesterday.

The plan was to go out to lunch, but she apparently has the directional sense of both Jen and Susie because it took three calls on her cell phone to get her here. Since much of our time was spent on the IL tollway system we altered our plans and ate here. Luckily, she isn't picky and didn't mind the leftovers I had in the fridge. I figured serving them on china and the placemats would fancy them up a bit.

The mats were easy if you want to make a set. They're just two rectangles of fabric sewn right sides together with a 6 inch opening on the side. Trim the corners and turn them right sides out. Cut a piece of timtex or peltex (or some other heavy duty interfacing) to the exact finished size of the placemat(this means you've elimated the seam allowances on the timtex piece). Roll the timtex up and slide it into the opening. Fiddle around with it on the inside to get it to lay flat and push into the corners. I also put all the seam allowances toward the back of the placemat, on the bottom of the timtex. Fold in the open side over the timtex and then edgestitch all the way around the mat closing up the opening. I ran a second row of edgestitching 1/4" in from the first. The only difficult part of the project is manhandling the timtex into position. It should fit really snugly into the edges.

If you did sets of these in fabrics to match friends' and relatives' kitchens they'd be great Christmas gifts.

aliens, tigers, and magicians - oh my!

Happy Halloween!!

Glenn has entered an alien phase. He devours books on the topic and I'm regaled with his theory on what happened in Roswell. He saw this mask at the party shop in town and that was it for him. Next came the request for a cape. I let him choose the fabric not knowing he'd go for such a Vegas vibe. It works though. The fabric rippled in the breeze which made for a cool effect. I'm pretty pleased with getting the collar to stand up like that. A heavy interfacing did the trick. Next year I'll bedazzle it and he can go as Liberace.

This get up was Ellie's second choice. Her first was a peacock. Um, no. She received a magic set for her birthday from a friend and loved it. I decided to strike while the iron was hot and offered to go get her a top hat and make a wand to go with her set. It worked. All that was left was another cape. We settled on blue with silver glitter speckled on it because they were out of hot pink (and apparently purple is so last year for her).

This picture makes me a bit melancholy. Trixie is the last to wear the tiger suit I originally made for Glenn. It's beginning to show it's age - split seam on the tail, loose foot strap barely held in place with a safety pin. It's also the last animal suit I made - the following year he was more "involved" in his costume choices. Involved means I let him pick, instead of forcing him to wear what I wanted to make. And I'm sure it'll be the same for Trixie next year. I spent a good part of trick or treating tonight thinking about what the other two were like the years they wore this one. Glenn had a rare fit just as I wanted to take pictures. Ellie was so thrilled people were giving her candy that she was afraid to let go of any of it for fear it might disappear. She only lasted for a few houses because she couldn't hold any more candy in her hands. For now, I'll just think about Trixie chasing her tail until she caught it the first time we put the suit on her.

inspired by walmart

I read a lot of magazines each month. More than I should. Never in a million years would I have thought I'd pay actual money for a magazine published by Walmart. I couldn't help myself though, some of these were on the front cover this month. (In my defense, I didn't even realize who published the magazine until I started really looking through it at home.)

Two pans were donated to the cakewalk at our school's Halloween Carnival, Pumpkinpalooza, this weekend.

What the directions don't mention is that by the time you've bought all the products for the decorations (if you can find them all), you could have spent about a fourth of the money on some ready to go treats in the bakery. These are cuter though.

And they forgot to include my special ingredients in the recipe.

spooky

I probably should have called this post "I Heart Martha Stewart". Got a little crafty this Halloween with her help. I want every last thing in her line at Michael's. I controlled myself though and stuck with just a few items this year.

What's more fun than bones and glitter? Nothing, I tell you.

Well, maybe some stickers. And fake apples. Does anyone know where I can find some tiny plastic spiders to stick in those glass cigar holders? I didn't have any luck finding fake eyeballs either. Did you know that Hobby Lobby clerks will back away from you when you ask what aisle would have them?

Okay, the spider isn't from her line. I don't remember where I got her, but her egg sac is from an October issue of Living. Maybe last year. It's supposed to have a styrofoam egg wrapped in batting in the nylon to give it the proper shape. Mine is filled with the extra cobwebby stuff that my children managed to roll in leaves and other debris before getting completely bored with the whole thing and walking away. I figure the bits of dirt in there give it an earthy, true to nature vibe. It sort of offsets the plastic spiders.

More tomorrow!