Spooooooookkkkkkeeeeeee!

We had family staying with us this weekend so we had our Halloween Party on the Saturday night rather than Sunday, means kids can go trick-or-treating tonight!  Compared to our American cousins we do hardly anything for Halloween but as a family we like to have a party and eat disgusting food and get dressed up!  Here's what we did this year......

Dead Flies in the cupcakes

Cauldron of crisps!

Pepperoni pumpkins

even the gerbils cage was decorated!

Worms in a bun were really disgusting!

Miss M getting into character

Pink and Purple Delight!

I fancied a nice autumn/winter skirt in corduroy so I trotted off to the fabric shop the other day and bought myself a couple of metres of rich purple corduroy. 

Using my tried-and-tested-self-drafted-a-line-skirt-pattern I made my skirt.  This was a lot more exciting than it sounds, mainly because I got to use my new overlocker and finish off the seams neatly!  Ok so its a simple skirt and there are only 2 seams but work with me here, I was excited!!  First garment I've made with overlocked (is that a word?!) seams after a few goes playing with it!  It's ever so lovely! 

So I had envisaged doing some reverse applique on this skirt, I didn't have an exact idea in my mind, maybe some sort of leaf pattern on the bottom.  I started sketching out a few ideas and decided to go for a kinda-circular-leaf-sunflower-affair.  I trawled through the scrap bag to find something suitable until I came across a pink knit dress that used to belong to Miss M.  I had put it in the scrap bag intending to copy it to make her a new larger one as she had outgrown it and despite Miss C getting all the cast offs she didn't need another dress.  Now this dress has been in the 'to-do' pile for about 9 months so I got realistic and decided that my need was greater than hers attacked it with the rotary cutter!  There are loads of different tutorials and posts about how to do reverse-applique and I guess there isn't a right or wrong way, as each project is different, but basically I followed Lil Blue Boos instructions.  The most nerve-wracking part was cutting the corduroy fabric as there's no going back once you've done that, I was afraid I would cut through to the pink knit underneath but I managed it (all the way through that stage I kept singing First Cut Is The Deepest)! 

So now I just added a bit of pink bias binding to finish the waist and hemmed it and done.  I know its not the most exciting or original skirt in the world but I love it as it was all my idea although I was probably channelling Boden when I thought of it!  So what do you think?  Funky, smiley, friendly, comfortable, unique and fun are my thoughts!

I shall be linking up with all these lovely link parties this week

 





 

P.S. It also means I can strike another thing off my to-do list in the sidebar!  Result!

MIA!

Ok so I know I've been gone for ages, I know its taken me a long time to get anything made but here we are at last!  Drumroll please...........
I made a banner!  Whoohoo!  We do a Halloween party for the kids and each year we gather a little more Halloween decor, usually plastic spiders and the like so I decided that it needed to be fabric.... and I HAD to buy some Halloween cotton. Searched around and found Robert Kaufman Eerie Alley so that and a bit of black twill and orange thread and we have a banner.

Ok I know its not the most amazing creation in the world of crafty blogs but I'm back!  I also have bought some purple corduroy to make a skirt for myself (maybe with a bit of reverse applique if I can find a suitable fabric from my stash to contrast it), a lion costume for Miss M for school (need to get some fun fur!) and a little business venture for a friend.  I also made some curtains for our study which I decorated the other week which ended up having to be hand sewn as the fabric was too thick for to do a blind hem on my machine!  Took ages but done now!  I want to decorate Miss Ms bedroom and make her curtains, pillows, duvet etc but I think I'll wait til after Christmas as there is enough to be doing without making life more difficult!!!!