Detail, MacKenzie’s dress

Monkey baby!

The monkey baby turned out really cute. I made the whole thing in a day…it was very simple. I found the fabric at Discount Fabrics in San Francisco, which is also walking distance from my office. Just a nice basic low pile brown fur. The tan parts are that cheesy faux suede they sell at Fabric Hell (some folks have asked me about Fabric Hell…that’s my little pet name for Jo-Ann Fabrics. Yeah, they get a lot of my money, but I don’t have to like it). The hat is red silk doupioni that I had lying around, with a gold tassel and gold soutache braid. It’s lined with fusible fleece for body. I thought I’d have to stuff it, but it was fine without it. I really wish I’d topstitched the inner ear, to give that more definition. The ears are kind of lame. The tail totally makes up for it, though. That’s a fine tail. The monkey costume is by Simplicity, in 2007 the number is 3598. They change the number every year or so, but they keep making it.

The baby wasn’t sure what to make of the feet. When the costume arrived, her mom put the feet on her (they’re like little booties) and Jadyn just stared at her feet and finally reached out very carefully to touch them. So, in the end, my hypothesis was correct: babies dressed like monkeys are, indeed, funny.

Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Photos of Sarah’s dress in progress:

Bodice	Front

Thursday, October 11, 2001

The bodice of Sarah’s dress is completely assembled, and I’ve done a lot of the beadwork on MacKenzie’s bodice and sleeves. Things could be worse.

I bought some of those cheesy gold strung beads at Fabric Hell, and sewed them on to the lower sleeves on Sarah’s dress, in a grid pattern. I don’t have a bead foot for my machine, so I just set the presser foot tension to almost nothing (a very cool feature of my Viking – I can tell the machine how hard to press down on the fabric!) and ran over the beads with a large zig zag. It worked! It’s not couture, since the lines aren’t perfectly straight, but it looks really cool. And, as Ryan reminded me about 40 times as we were sewing last weekend, it is just a costume. I think she’s afraid I’m going to melt down from stress, but, really, I don’t have time for that!

MacKenzie’s costume is pink satin, with lots of white lace and pearls and pink ribbon roses. It’s very sweet. I’m looking forward to starting to sew it this weekend. Leigh helped me cut out everything last weekend, so I hopefully I can just get right to work on it!

I found horsehair braid in all kinds of colors today at Britex fabrics in San Francisco – my new office is a few blocks from there, dangerous, dangerous! So, I bought that in green and pink for the hems of their skirts. I’d like to have Sarah’s dress finished by the end of the weekend, and now I have everything I need to do that. I just have to attach the skirt to the bodice, put in the zipper, and hem the skirt, which is easy to do with the horsehair. Horsehair braid (ok, it’s really nylon) gives the bottom of the skirt a bit of extra body so it will be poufier. Poufy is good for princesses!

I still don’t have the fabric for the monkey costume, but that’s because I’m really lazy. I’m going to hunt it down this weekend. I promise.

Tuesday, September 18, 2001

Is it time for this crazy aunt to start thinking about Halloween costumes already? Yes, it is! Sarah and MacKenzie are both going to be beautiful princesses, and the baby will be a monkey (see pattern at right).

I bought the fabric for Sarah’s costume already. Jessica McClintock’s outlet in S. San Francisco is selling fabric again, and I got some really cool dark teal satin with little glitter sparklies that are all over my hands and will soon be all over the house. I got 2 beaded appliques that will look really good with it; they’re a weird shape—I’ll have to cut them up and re-assemble them to fit the bodice of her dress. So, Sarah’s costume is going to have sort of a green and gold theme. I think it will be gorgeous.

They didn’t have the right pink fabric for Kenz’s dress. Mostly, they had a lot of dark or subdued colors, and I want to use some white trims and lace that I have, so I need a non-dusty pink. I’ll go to Fabric Hell for pink satin for her. I did get a nice white lace applique for the front of her dress, and then my big score was a huge bolt of white sequin trim. 72 yards of white sequin trim, actually, for $5. I also got 2 rhinestone button things that will look all kinds of swanky on the dress bodices or as choker necklaces.

I’m still trying to find brown berber fleece for the monkey; I’ll use fur if I have to (done it before!) but I think the baby would be happier in fleece.