On Two Little 1920's Elephants!

Hi, happy new year a quarter of the year in, clearly things are not off to a racing start on here...

Ages and ages ago, I came across an image of a pattern for an elephant from the September 1921 issue of Allers Familie Journal on Pinterest and it went in a folder for later use. Time went by and after quite a bit searching I manged to hunt down a digital copy of the magazine on the PLU Archives and find the remaining pages I needed for his clothes.

And then I forgot about it, which was followed by remembering it a considerable time latter and finally printing the pieces out. The project then was put off for ages while I tried to find the right fabric both in terms of color and texture. 

Found the right fabric about a year and a half ago and ended up buying it in two shades, and then once again it was put off. Recently I decided it was time to tackle this project (with motivation coming from possibly needing some gray for another project). With continued indecision over which of the two color gray fabrics I was using, the solution became that I would be making two elephants because, why not also make a girl elephant? 

I did end up translating the original instructions from Swedish more just to see if they did anything fun construction-wise, but then it became a mission to get it all translated resulting in over four hours of "fun".

And...after three months (no, it should not have taken more than a weekend), I had Imogene and Walter.

 

With Walter I used the pattern from the magazine for his clothes, although I'm not entirely sure they were the right size for him since I resized the page from the magazines and originally for the body I was working with a screenshot image. Imogene, being my own idea, I used the pattern for Walter's shirt, extending it and leaving off the sleeves, and adding a bias tape belt. I keep wondering if she might need a sequin brooch eventually. 

 

 

♥ ♥ ♥

On Reindeer Bells

I'm a little late in starting in on my Christmas crafting this year. This past week I got to work on remedying this and to justify last year's on sale purchase of a pack of 72 bells, made reindeer. 

In case you are wondering, the one is yellow because I was out of brown pipe cleaners and was eager to see if my idea of using bells for the body would work. 

While I was intending for them to be ornaments, I may just be happy with letting them stand about on their own.♥ 

On a Thanksgiving Pie Skirt

For various reasons I haven't been sewing clothing items for the past year, but when I saw this pie fabric early or mid-summer, being a pie baker I just couldn't resist and knew that even if I had to push myself I was going to make a circle skirt for Thanksgiving. 

In September I decided that if I could at least get the pieces cut out I would then be able to sew them together at a later date, which ended up being Veteran's Day weekend and this past week. 

Sewing a circle skirt together is fairly quick, although when I reached the hem I found I forgot how to use the narrow hem foot on the sewing machine. As usual the hem waffled, but as I always shorten the pattern when I'm tracing it, I never have a perfectly curved hem anyway, so this probably just adds to it doing that. While not typically considered ideal, I actually like the look.

I had wanted a baby ric-rac on this, but for some reason neither fabric store had off white and I ended up finding a nice olive green medium sized ric-rac for purchase by the yard, which I'm rather happy with as it was the color I wanted in the first place. 

Only a few things need to be adjusted on this. I need to go back and fix the 1/8 inch worth of white selvage that is showing in the one side seam (I spent about an hour unpicking the other side seam to remedy this problem and just could not handle unpicking a second seam, thought I'd be okay with it, but it bugs me) and I think I'm going to try using a fabric marker to color the bit of white showing at the zipper opening (I will NOT be redoing the zipper). Last night I also managed to sew the hooks slightly off from where they are supposed to be and as I didn't make my typical adjustment for my larger than me pattern, this skirt needs all the help it can get it terms of it being tighter in the waist, so they'll need to be re-sewn on.

That being said though, it's a very nice skirt for Thanksgiving and while it wasn't going to get it made this year, I already have the Wearing History "Harriet" Drop Shoulder Blouse pattern and some white on white print fabric lined up for a matching blouse.

  Happy Thanksgiving!♥

On a Small Scarecrow

I was planning to make some small scarecrows. I made a scarecrow. I'm done small scarecrow making now. 

His name is Hawthorne and, while it didn't quite turn out as I envisioned it (I didn't realize I used up my fake leaves), I feel he looks quite nice in his autumnal bucket.♥