Knight outfit

Today Charlotte was going to a Knights and Damsels in distress party, she excitedly went through the princess dresses and chose to go as Ariel. Emma was allowed to tag along, and decided 1 hour before the party started that she didn't want to be a damsel, she wanted to be a knight. I decided that I would take up the challenge, and rifled through the airing cupboard for an old pillow case.

None of the outfit is hemmed, so it is unlikely to last that long, but in the time I had I was very pleased with my effort. I cut out a neck hole and folded the corners in to make the shoulders. I sewed a silver button on to the point of each folded corner to secure it. I then cut from the hem of the pillowcase up to just under the folded corner, about 4cm in from the side seam on the front of the pillowcase - this gave a cloak at the back and the front of a tabard at the front. I cut the front a little shorter and the back too, as Emma is quite little and I didn't want her to trip on it, then sewed a couple of lengths of chain from under one button to under the other one. I then used felt tip pen to draw the cross on the front (the fabric pen had conveniently run out). Ta-dah, one knight costume.

She wore a grey t-shirt and grey leggings underneath, then a belt of mine looped twice around her waist to hold the tabard part to her body. She made the sword and shield herself at her birthday party earlier in the year.

New shoes

I have a pair of shoes from Office, which I love. They are simple, canvas mary jane pumps with black polka dots. Unfortunately, they are in very bad shape; I have checked and Office doesn't do canvas ones any more, only jersey, which I don't like. I trawled the internet for some similar shoes with no luck, but did find some plain hessian ones in Tesco.

I picked them up yesterday and while the quality is nowhere near that of my originals (not surprising, as they were less than half the price!), they are comfortable. They did need a bit of work to make them look like more than £8 shoes, but 10 buttons and some thread later, I am very pleased with the result.

Button craft

A while back, a friend of mine posted on Facebook a link to a page of button craft creations. There were some beautiful things on there and my friend made a gorgeous Christmas wreath with buttons donated from all her family members. I thought that familiar line... I could do something like that.

Button snowman

So, last Christmas my family received tree decorations, based on some I saw on the button page my friend posted. I finally learned blanket stitch to make these, something I had been meaning to do for a while, so I could also finally finish my daughters' Christmas stockings that had been half made for a couple of years.

So after the Christmas decorations I thought I'd branch out into something a bit more permanent, like a cushion. I went to Wilkinsons and bought a cheap cushion with machine embroidered twigs on it. I then sewed on a few sequins and buttons to brighten it up and match it to the colour scheme of my sitting room.