Hi there, I finally have found 5 minutes to myself to do another blog post. I can not even believe how much my little business has taken off in the last few months. I nearly had to turn down a spot in Topstitchers Season 3 but really, really wanted to do it so pushed a couple of projects back a few days so I could compete. This time the prompt given was:
History is filled with women we adore, whose closets we envy. But for every Princess Di and Jackie O, there’s an equally fashionable counterpart we love to hate. For this “Mean Girl” challenge, design a modern, wearable, (and age appropriate) outfit inspired by the Marie Antoinettes and Kardashians of the world.
Judges will be looking for wearable designs with high-fashion elements. Take risks in your designs, and be sure to tie them into the time period, reputation, or actual closets of your inspiration.
I was really excited about the project and would have loved to create a full on historic costume style outfit, the rules did state however that it had to be modern and wearable. My full comments on the outfit can be found here
Massive thanks again to Becca for involving me in such a fun project and to Annabel for being the most stunning and sweetest looking ‘mean girl’ ( I can’t even type that with a straight face – she is adorable lol) I have ever seen.
I am so excited that I can finally share these pictures with you. For those of you who have visited and wondered why my house has been covered in feathers and leather for the last few weeks – this is why.
I was asked if I would be interested in taking part in Topstitchers season 2 and that I would be making an OTT couture / avant garde inspired outfit – for a boy! Oh YES, yes I would be very interested in doing that hehe. When the theme came through I was chomping at the bit to get started. This was the promt we were given.
No two birds sing the same song” – just as no two seamstresses will design the same over-the-top look… because YOU will be designing a boy’s “songbird” look. That is, a look inspired by a song about birds (or anything with wings).
Whilst being super duper excited to take part I was a little apprehensive when I discovered who my competitor would be. I know Cassie from Lilyshine Boutique through working with Pattern Revolution. She took part in season 1 of Topstitchers, taking part in another OTT themed contest with the prompt of ‘Cinderella’. Her entry was exquiste, you can find it here and I think you will understand why I was slightly terrified. I did however let my mind creep a couple of times to the fact, that whilst she definitely has the upperhand when it comes to beautiful dresses, I may actually have an advantage with it being ‘boy’ sewing. But what will be will be and win, lose or draw I am so glad I got to take part.
So with no further ado here is my Swanlake inspired story of a young prince catching a glimpse of a beautiful princess whilst playing in the woods.
A young prince wanders through the forestA white vision appears behnd a treeThe swan princessThe prince wanders down to the lake and spots the princess once more (after posing in a dramatic fashion for the camera 😉 )The Prince and Swan PrincessThe sorceror approachesThe swan is jealous of the prince and turns him into an evil (slightly demented looking) swanEvil swanEvil swanLeaping swanI can flyThe evil swan curses the princess as he was cursed
For the last 6 months or so, Mr 7 has been slightly obsessed with all things Michael Jackson. Well not ‘all’ things thank goodness, just the dancing and the music. His 7th Birthday is coming up and seeing as he missed out on a party last year, due to his baby brother having just been born, we thought we would throw him a bit of a shindig.
We decided on a Thriller theme, firstly because it’s his favourite song but also because we could incorporate a bit of a zombie theme – for those who were adverse to wearing sequins. He had a Billy Jean costume from when the lucky monkey got to go to ‘Thriller Live’ with his grandparents, however I figured he should have a Thriller jacket for a Thriller party. Now this was on top of an urgent order for one of my Prince Charming costumes, one of the Joffrey costumes, two pirate costumes, having to ‘unboy’ the house in preparation for the party and organising the party itself. Arghhhh.
Meh! I’m not big on making life easy for myself 🙂
I used http://www.peekaboopatternshop.com/happy-camper-reversible-jacket/ as a base to make the jacket from. I stitched parallel lines into the shoulder panels to recreate the ridged look. Instead of installing a zip (any excuse not to put in a zip) I made rectangluar tabs with snap closures. The ‘V’ was just a strip of leather (well pleather) appliqued on top.
TheThriller jacket
The next thing to organise was the cake ….yeah,….. that’s not my area of expertise. Just mentioning the words ‘helicopter cake’ to any member of my family will result in them dissolving into fits of giggles. Let’s just say it ended up looking more like a certain part of the male anatomy than the airborne vehicle it was supposed to represent. My sister on the other hand has shown a bit of talent in that department in recent years so she got the gig. A quick search of Pintrest (obviously) was all it took and this was the final result.
Not a bad effort Aunty Hayley
A few other finds from Pintrest that fit our theme:
Ok so I may stick with sewing, baking is just not my forte – but they tasted goodA jar full of trapped Zombies
My favourite find for decoration were some printables with some words from Thriller(the two I found were from here http://anightowlblog.com/2013/09/thriller-halloween-printables.html ), so I took those 2 and made some more of my own – added a couple of creepy pictures and made a ‘scary’ bunting of sorts
it’s close to midnight and something evil’s lurking in the dark.Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heartYou close your eyes and hope that this is just imagination
The final touches were added – self explanitory really
Here Lies the King of Pop
The kids all had a ‘Thrilling’ time (sorry)
We had Michael Jackson’s of all decades and zombies show up to the party
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