Since her birth I've been pretty lucky in finding all the costumes she's worn online. From her first year Pumpkin get up (Thank you Gymboree) to her fabulous Little Bo Peep get up one year, to last year, Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz. I found a wonderful seamstress on Ebay of all places and she makes THE best costumes out there. Her attention to detail is amazing and we've always gotten rave reviews on the ones she's done. Last year's Dorothy was probably one of the best in my opinion as my Little Chick looked beautiful. Right down to her ruby slippers and a stuffed Toto in a basket, I couldn't have envisioned a better get up than that.
Fast forward to present day:
Little Chick exclaims, "I want to be an angel this year!" Angel? As in Hark the "harried" Angel sing" kind-of angel? I was perplexed. Never in the years of talking costumes had an angel come up. I decided this meant she was serious and I didn't even try to talk her out of it No fear, I'll check my trusty Halloween Seamstress and get a jump on a purchase...she does not make angel costumes. And then in a light-shined-down-on-me kind of moment, I said to myself, "Self, how hard could it really be to make an angel costume? Find a pattern and make one!" Found the perfect pattern on Ebay (I just LOVE Ebay. I could go on and on about that site, but it would take away from the Mother of all projects so I'll just leave it at I Love Ebay). From 1952. I know, totally vintage and I thought perfect for this project. Well, come to find out, sewing patterns from the early 50's are slightly different from patterns of today. To start, fabric came in a different width back then, than what they do know. So a slight accommodation had to be made right from the get-go and thankfully my MIL is in the know of such things. She stopped by and lent me a hand in deciphering out what needed to be done (helped determine what to skip over since it didn't make any sense to her either) and watched my Littlest Chick while I ran to our favorite fabric shop, Material Girl.
Now I know next to nothing about fabric and all the notions that accompany projects of this magnitude. Luckily, Material Girl herself was there to help me and she is such a big help. It's clear she loves what she does and I wish I had an ounce of her obvious talent. Anyway, I start of by telling her what I'm making and show her the pattern. She is all kinds of vintage so she loves the look and idea. I feel like I'm on to something here which makes me have even more confidence in this project. We start with the fabric and head toward the simple cotton. I find the perfect one with teeny, tiny stars on it, in white. Very subtle but perfect for my Little Angel. 6 1/2 yards later, I'm moving on to scissors.
Let's talk scissors. If you're not a scissors aficionado like I'm clearly not, you wouldn't know the first thing about scissors. But MG has the Mother of all scissors there in her shop. Gingher Scissors are like the Rolls Royce of scissors. Made with things like "hard carbon cutlery steel" and technicians that do a "hot-drop forge" to the scissors, well it's not hard to understand why MG actually tells me they can be heirlooms, and you know I'm all kinds of all over that. Not only are they the top of the line, they are bee-uuu-tee-full. Check them out: Bee-uuu-tee-full-ness. Of course I had to have them, thinking that they quite possibly may make the costume on their own. I can't even talk price as my Better Half may be reading this and I don't want him suffering a heart attack, but I will say it was and will continue to be one of the most ridiculous purchases I've yet to make on the onset of a project I'll probably only do once. But hey, I'm right on course after all!
Back at home, Dear MIL sets out to help me decipher the cutting directions and how to go about pinning the pattern onto my star fabric. I had been thinking this was going to be the most tricky part but it actually turns out that it's the easiest and with those Gingher scissors mentioned above, well, I felt like I was cutting through butter. As a matter of fact, I'm more in love with these scissors then I was before and quite possibly will be buried with them, even if this is the only project I'll ever do with them. But I digress. After cutting the fabric pieces out, I'm finding myself being rather proud of the fact I'm actually making Little Chicks costume. Today, I managed to sew the two back, and two front pieces together, along with the sides and shoulders. I've neatly pressed my seams flat-something I remember from my High School Home Economics class-and have ended my sewing session for the day lovingly eying what I've accomplished so far. Honestly, I'm worried a real Calamity may be ahead because I can't make heads or tails out of the next directions about bias binding and adding the collar piece. The sleeves (bell shaped of course) are bound to be just as big of a mess and I'm steadfastly losing hope that those scissors will cut my way out of the Calamity that's bound to happen. I'm all kinds of nervous and am not sure what to do next so of course the next possible thing to do is to stop. And with that, this will have to be continued.
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| Inactive sewing machine. Can you spy the Gingher Scissors? |
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