Another Pillow

Just whipped up another pillow, this time with some embroidered circles and some straight line quilting.

A Knight’s Tunic

The other costume I’m quite glad to show off happens to be a knight’s tunic.

It does actually fit one of my little ones, but it was made for his older brother.

Materials: 1 yard 54″ wide fabric, 1/2 yard coordinating ribbon (1 1/2″ wide),

 and silver thread for making chain mail effect.

1. Measure your knight first before cutting. The width of your tunic is his shoulder width minus two inches.

The length is up to you, but I liked it just a bit past the waist.

2. Cut two equal rectangles. These should measure {shoulder-two inches} wide by TWICE your length measurement. Fold these rectangles in half and make your neck hole. Be forewarned, it’s very easy to overshoot that size. Make it smaller than you think you need, and test it out on your knight.

3. Sew the whole thing together, right sides together, leaving a hole for turning. I left an entire end for that purpose.

4. Turn right sides out, then topstitch the whole tunic, including neckline. Now to embellish your creation.

5. With coordinating thread, sew on your ribbon at about your knight’s waist measurement. Now, starting from the shoulder, lightly draw with a pencil the outline of your chain mail. I then embroidered those lines with silver thread because my silver didn’t play nice in my machine. You could easily choose a non-metallic thread and outline by machine.

Just to note that both this and the ladybug cape won their group’s awards for the best costume, so they were well worth the time!

A Ladybug Cape

From the feedback I get, one of my most popular posts is the cabbage queen costume. {Was I so right when I say there is nothing out there in the blogosphere about it?} In keeping with the cabbage queen, I decided to show off two other costumes I’ve made, which were much easier to create and are more common. The first is a ladybug costume. Wish I had pictures for you of my little ladybug in this get-up, because she was some kind of adorable! It’s for a small child, age 1-2. I believe she was 18 months old, which she is NOT now! It’s a simple cape, which she wore over a little black outfit. For antennae, she wore a headband with pipecleaners and little sparkly pom poms. Again, I could kick myself for no picture! The construction for this little ladybug was fairly simple. It’s two half circle “quilts”, with little applique circles and a ribbon tie.

This photo shows you how big it wound up. I think I used about a half yard of the red fabric, and of course, scraps of the black. I made each “wing” independently, then sewed and reinforced them at the top overlapping area. I also sewed a small rectangle in that space to attach the ribbon. And voila, a ladybug costume!

Pinwheel Sampler Quiltalong Finish

Yaaaaayyyyy!!

{That’s the sound of a complete queen size quilt.}

It’s Make Life, from Moda, and the pattern is Rachel’s Pinwheel Sampler Quiltalong.

While I enjoy every bit of the process (except perhaps borders-blah),

once I work with a colorway for several months, I’m ready to put it to use.

This quilt found a home as it rolled off the press!