A Pirate's Life

 Yesterday I showed you Lily's girly-girl birthday gift. This is what I made her brother Ryan. He's a big fan of that pirate cartoon that's on tv now, and his pirate enthusiasm was magnified after a recent vacation to FL where he got to have a pirate boat experience. One day we were pretending to be pirates and he decided his pirate name was Captain Bean.

This is basically Dana's Pirate Life costume. I just added the extra skull and bones on the back of the vest. Don't look too closely at my bias tape work. I made my own for the first time, but the bias tape maker I have makes it much narrower than I usually like. Plus I sewed it on the lazy way, really quickly and didn't change the black bobbin thread. I just told myself that a pirate's vest would be raggedy looking anyway :)

 I wish I had unrolled the treasure map  and taken a picture for you. That was Nick's contribution to the gift and he made a great one. It had different things and places in Ryan's house drawn on it and there was a big X on the bathtub. When we first got to the party I hid a bag of candy in their tub. Then later when he had time for a treasure hunt he got to share it with all of his friends. He kept saying "the bathtub is my treasure!"

I also made a quick drawstring backpack to store all his treasures in. The applique on here is just cut off of an old t-shirt.


Yo-Ho-Ho. Shoulda made a felt bottle of rum.

A girly-girl birthday gift.

Our little friend Alivia turned 3 last week and I made her this little dress-up set. She is a very sweet, pink and girly girl, so sorry if you gag on these pinkalicious pictures a little. But she seemed to like them :)

I sprung for the sparkle tulle instead of plain with this tutu, but be forewarned- the stuff is stiffer and it takes a little longer to do the no-sew version. It did for me anyway. But what 3-yr old doesn't appreciate a little sparkle?

The wings I made with this pattern. I changed the shape though to make them a little softer. The shape the pattern has would probably be better to make dragon wings for a boy or something. I also had to make them quite a bit smaller. I found this project on Chez Beeper Bebe, which I love.

For the little wand, I broke a dowel in half, painted it pink, and sandwiched it and the round ruffled thing between two circles of sparklicious craft foam. To ruffle the fabric, just cut a long thin strip and make a gathering stitch on one long edge. Pull the top thread to gather and sew the ends into a circle. If that sounds confusing, it's just like this tutorial, just adjust the sizes to what you need.