The Vampire Bat

I never got around to blogging the costumes I made last year, and with Halloween almost upon us again it seems like the perfect time to catch up.

Last Halloween my daughter wanted to be a vampire bat, as you do...

Here she is, pointing backwards at a rose bush (yes, awkward pose but I didn't manage to get many photos before she and her friends were off door knocking):

This costume was heavily improvised.  There was a costume online that my daughter wanted, but it was (a) expensive, (b) trashy and (c) too warm for our climate. Oh and it was shipping from America, so probably wouldn't have got to us in time.

So we discussed the key elements (stretchy black dress, silky wings, furry hood with ears, holey stockings) and I sketched out the costume to check we were on the same page (yes!), then whipped up a very quick long-sleeved t-shirt dress using a t-shirt pattern that I knew fit well, Burda 9439:

This is a short-sleeved t-shirt pattern, but with a couple of length measurements it's very easily turned into a long-sleeved t-shirt dress.  Anyway, the fit was good, but the grey/black jersey I'd used looked vaguely trendy instead of spooky, so we called version 1 a new dress... and dug out a second piece of stash fabric, a remnant of black jersey (not quite enough for the dress, hence the seam at hip level).

This time around I paused after sewing the shoulder seam and attaching the sleeves (in the flat) so I could make some wings to sew into the side seams of the dress.  The only fabric I could find in my stash that looked and felt right for wings was a length of beautiful silk jersey I'd picked up a Tessuti remnant sale a long time ago.  In the interests of reusability (I want that fabric back one day!!) I decided to simply cut it in half, so that each wing is simply a long rectangle, long enough to stretch from skirt hemline to wrist.

I hope the next photo explains that a bit better:

Not hemmed, not ironed but perfectly acceptable for a kid's costume!

This "design" means there is a lot of scope for arm movement and bat-like fluttering - and my daughter can extend her arms above her head without the wings moving the dress up. The luscious wing fabric makes the costume very popular, and the outfit has had a lot of wears over the past year. It went to a Halloween disco on Friday night and is going out again on Monday evening, and now fits a lot better than it did last year, so I guess it's been a successful costume...

Oh I nearly forgot - the hood! I actually love the hood, because it reminds me of the movie version of Where the Wild Things Are - I kind of want a giant furry hoodie for myself :).

For this part of the outfit I started with Butterick 6695, a little kids animal onesie pattern I used years ago for my son (not blogged). I didn't want the hood to come all the way around the neck the way the hood in the animal onesie does, so I studied a couple of Simplicity costumes (5512 and 5840) to confirm the shape for a simpler hoodie.

 

And none of the standard ear shapes on Butterick 6695 looked particularly bat like, so I drew up my own ear pattern: a smaller inner piece with a fold in the middle, and a larger enfolding outer piece (much easier to do than that probably sounds). Here's the hood in close-up - the ear details get lost in all that fur though:

You can probably see in the above that the fur is just on the outside of the hood - the "lining" is matt black technical fabric left over from a dress I made ages ago. (The fake fur is left over from a mouse costume made for my son when he was in childcare). The hood "lining" is sewn to the neckline of the dress because I thought the weight of the fake fur and ears would make the outer fake fur hang fall nicely over the neckline, but in fact it all tends to tip forwards. Which is not a problem, because it's comfortable on, and my daughter loves it.

Here's a back view of the hood taken last year - this year I'm afraid the fake fur is tipped further forward as it accounts for a bit more growth...

And since I was sewing a costume and playing around with all the black remnants, my son got a "test" hoodie to wear with his costume cape and staff.  This one is a very simple pointy hood, and my recollection is that I made it just by sewing up 2 adjoining sides of a rectangle, then sewing a deep hem around the face.  

This year the vampire bat is being resurrected, but my son is going to be a dead person, complete with fake knife wound - very gory but no sewing is required. 

I'll leave you with one more photo of the vampire bat's fluttering wings:

 And will try to be back soon with more sewing!


See you soon

- Gabrielle xx

Burda 9439 Kids Tops

Arghhh this post is massively late - it's two kids tops from OVER A YEAR AGO!!

Let me jump straight into it then... 

I find Burda pattern sizing to be really good for my kids - the width and ease are good on my kids, and there's always a good range of "workhorse" styles around.  The two tops here were both made using Burda 9439, a multi-size (are they all?) paper pattern for 6 variants on a t-shirt. The fact that the patterns include lines for so many ages - 3 to 12 in this case - means it's easy to make adjustments if your child is tall or short for their age, or has a stockier or slimmer build. 

The artwork on the envelope suggests the pattern is a mostly girls' one, but views B, E and F all look like they'd be perfectly acceptable to most boys. 

First up, I made a blue t-shirt for my son using view F.  At the time he was nearly 11; I cut the size 11 width-wise with the length of the size 12, the largest size in the pattern.  Both my kids are tall for their age, so while their width measurements are close to what Burda expects for their age, their height measurements generally take them up a size or two. 

 

He really liked the top, but I should have added more length to it - he grew significantly taller very quickly (apparently kids do that!) and the top didn't get as much wear as I would have liked. Unfortunately I didn't have enough fabric to make it longer, or even enough fabric to cut the front in one piece (yup, that band on the front is a fabric limitations indicator).

Anyway, while it fit him it was apparently very comfortable, with the fabric (a stretch viscose) cool and soft to the touch - I should make him more tops in this fabric.

Around the same time I also whipped up the long sleeved variant, view E, for my daughter.  She needed a warm top so I used a small piece of fleecy cotton jersey for the body (I think some people call this fabric French terry?) and some rib knit left over from another top for the sleeves and neckline.

My daughter was 8 at the time and I sewed her top as a straight size 9 - it looks too big all over in these photos, but the fabric shrank in width in the wash and she also grew suddenly taller, so the fit ended up being perfect despite my not having sewn quite the right size!

So despite my poor planning, this top had a lot of wear and became last year's winter favourite - comfortable and cosy, and plain enough to go with most other clothes.

This sort of pattern is so easy to make that once you've used it a few times the instructions become superfluous - all you really need is the decent drafting provided by the pattern.  Having said that, I have to admit I no longer rely on the proscribed neckband length these days though, because the length needed varies depending on the stretchiness of the particular fabric!

So easy, so quick - why haven't I made my kids more of these tops this year?


Back soon with some grown up sewing :)


- Gabrielle xx