My Current Obsession: Halloween

So it is a little late but here are our Halloween costumes! I was very pleased at the way they turned out seeing as I made EVERYTHING you see other than the hat, shows and gloves :) here is where I got my inspiration:





So it started with the hamburger dress... I thought it was just funny and unique and decided to make my own version. I told Nathan he could be french fries or something silly and he was not going for that and somehow came up with the hamburgalar! I thought was genius, so I went to work! His outfit is just a pattern for PJs that I made out of the striped material. I just sewed a yellow band for the hat and found a free tie pattern online and sewed the red tie. For my dress I found this cute pattern at Joann and bought a crap load of felt in various colors to make my burger belt. The sewing of the dress and Nathan's pants and shirt were the most challenging but once those were done the rest was easier... although the little hamburgers on the tie were sort of tedious. The finishing touch were the amazing cupcakes I saw on pintrest! The cupcakes were the final piece of the costume, they were a big hit but a pain to assemble!


Well my hard work was well appreciated at the annual Halloween party and we won the costume contest by 1 vote! Yay! So now on to thinking about next years costumes :) my goal is to always come up with something somewhat original that has not been overly done and something I can get Nathan to agree too... NOT an easy task!
Thanks for reading!
xo

My Current Obsession: sewing

So, 2 weeks ago I decided to learn to sew. I bought a dress pattern ad some polka dotted fabric over at Walmart and just jumped right in... now 2 weeks later it is all I want to do! My dress turned out amazing (for my first try), I love it and want to wear it every day! I have also since started on me and my husbands halloween costumes as my next 2 projects.

It is not that I have never sewed before, because I have done a few projects with my mom when I was younger and most recently a halloween costume with her help about 3 years ago, but I have NEVER done something alone... mom pretty much would set me up and tell me where to put the stitch. Sewing by yourself is quite different, the directions that come with the pattern are practically no help at all! When I was trying to attach the sleeves to Nathan's costume thursday night I was SO confused... the directions said "pin sleeve to shirt, sew." Ummmm that sounds easy enough however I could not figure out what way to pin it on and I could also not see how in the world these two pieces fit together it is not as easy as it sounds! Anyways, after about 2 hours reading the "directions" over and over I finally got the sleeves attached! Success! There is definitely something to be said about learning things on your own vs. being shown just what to do because for the rest of my life I will know how to attach sleeves instead of being confused again next time if my mom would have just done it for me :)

So back to my first dress I made that I am so proud of, I wore it to church, a family get together and a wedding so far and have had many compliments on it, cause it is adorable... did I say that already? Anyways, so some of these people that compliment me on my dress I decided to brag to a little and let them know that I sewed it myself. At first most people were totally impressed and then they asked if I used a pattern. Hmm #1 clue that this person knows nothing about sewing... does it really seem plausible that I just picked out some material, went home and fashioned it into a dress with no pattern or direction or knowledge of sewing??? Of course I used a pattern! And then when you tell these people this they are no longer impressed they are like "oh yeah a pattern I see," really what they mean to say is "oh well of course any old person could make a dress with a PATTERN, nice try honey but even I could do that." Ok maybe not that dramatic but you get my point. Even if I was talented enough to design my own dress I would still make a pattern and then use that to make the dress! You can't just make some cuts and do some stitches and have a dress appear... some people. Granted it does not take a genius to make a dress it is not easy and takes a lot of learning for a newbie.

So anyways I am honestly obsessed with sewing... I want to do it all day everyday! I want to wake up sand sew and sew and break for lunch and then sew some more! It is so fun and I feel like I am learning so much. See before when I was sewing with my mom I always thought that I just wasn't good at it, especially since my mom was AMAZING at it. But now that I am older and wiser I realize, of course I wasn't good at it! You have to do something poorly first before you can do it well... just simply the act of doing it over and over will start to produce better results... duh. So now at the ripe age of 28 I have decided to just jump in and enjoy sewing the same seam 8 times before doing it right and reading the same line in the "directions" 50 times before I figure out the right way to assemble something because one day I plan to be good at it.

Do you sew? How did you learn?

Thanks for reading!

xo