We borrowed Ella Bella Ballerina and The Sleeping Beauty from the library and must have read it nearly every night before it was due. All in all, it was a decent book, retelling the Sleeping Beauty story in a non-Disney fashion, but still there's a prince who saves a helpless princess. I was getting tired of reading the book and sometimes when books are due, I actually return them instead of renewing them because I get tired of reading them. I was guilty of that this time. The other reason, Mia got in her head that she wanted a cape because Ella Bella puts on her cape at the end of the story. Ella Bella's cape is not a superhero cape, but a delicate and fancy cape fit for a ballerina. I opted to make a Superhero type cape because, we're trying to get away from the princess girly girl fantasy world. And there are lots of free patterns online for children's capes:
http://floatingworld.typepad.com/superhero.pdf
http://thelongthread.com/?p=98
http://sewingmamas.com/b/downloads.php?do=file&id=120
I figured without the book around, the child would let up about the cape because honestly I'm not really good at sewing and need to take a class. But Mia is pretty unrelenting. I made a lot of excuses: oh we don't have the right kind of fabric, Mama wants to finish her socks first (knitting socks at the moment), Mama does not have time, etc. But my Joanns coupons were expiring soon (must use coupons for everything especially things that I don't expect will get much use after the initial excitement) and I was inspired by Project Runway, so we made a trip to Joanna yesterday afternoon to pick out fabric. Guess I was looking for a challenge and deep down, I really do want to make her day.
Of course Mia wanted hearts. Luckily it was already on sale post Valentine's Day. She did take her time deciding on the right heart fabric and the coordinating fabric. The process was rather laborious as she changed her mind a few times. But I was happy because, the cost of 1 yard of dizzying hearts, 1 yard of coordinating costume satin (not something for novice sewers to work with, way too slippery), and red thread was $4.81. Gotta love coupons.
I used a combo of the patterns I found online and modified a bit. Most of the patterns I came across required Velcro or ribbon for closures, but I opted to use snaps because I wanted to minimize sewing. Velcro was tempting, but my Hello Kitty sewing machine probably could not handle sewing Velcro. During the project, we had one major mishap and one minor one. I thought Hello Kitty was done for when a pin got sucked into the machine. We had to take it apart to remove it with pliers. Not sure how that happened. The original crown I cut out of pink felt got mangled in the applique process, so I had to use a smaller iron-on crown that I had leftover from Project: Halloween costume embellishment. Overall, this was a pretty easy project to make. I am sure a seasoned seamstress could make the whole thing in 30 minutes or less. Probably took me a total of 4 hours from researching and pattern making (on wax paper) to completion with all the roadblocks. I consider this making good time because I am pretty slow when it comes to craft completion. I owe it all my ever persistent daughter. I hope she gets a lot of entertainment out of it.
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