Earlier this week customer Cammie called and inquired whether I knew someone who could sew an awning cover for her. After talking with her for a few minutes I told her to just bring it in and I’d take a look at it and I thought that with my guidance she could make this herself.

Today she brought in the fabric and the wooden frame her carpenter built for her and we tackled it together. We did some math, measuring and digging around in the basement for a few little supplies until we completed this awesome awning!
 
And we had a lot of fun doing it too. She has very little sewing experience but she was perfectly capable of “following the scalloped line” and sewed the little edging perfectly on the first try. Then we had to get “Girl Scout creative” with our staple gun with a too short cord and no working extension cord and a little more garbage picking to put it all together.

All in all a very satisfying project and now Cammie can tell all the visitors to her basement Ice Cream Parlor that “I made that!” and be deservedly proud of her achievement.

Have I ever mentioned that I LOVE HALLOWEEN?
Artgirlz has such cool stuff anyway but I just fell in love with their special Halloween items. Friday after school Emma and I played with the mixed bag of black and orange felt balls in various sizes. They call them their pumpkin and spider collection. So of course I made a few of each of those! I used the teeny-tiny balls with seed beads to make eyes on the big spiders. Strong thread and a short piece of brown pipe cleaner makes a really cute pumpkin.

The Witch Kits are my favorite. (I also have two similar kits for Christmas, an elf and a tree.)

 
Last week Emma sketched out what she wanted her Halloween costume to look like. She decided she wanted to be a fairy but not a “Disney Princess Fairy”. More like a Woodland Sprite kind of fairy.

She came into the store with me today and on our way we stopped at Joann’s (yes, even I still shop there on occassion!) for materials. We found this metallic stretchy fabric that looked like magical tree bark or something. I added three colors (black,brown and tan) shimmery tulle and some dark olive green cotton knit and we had the makings of a Woodland Fairy costume.

Going by her vision and sketch plus a few ideas of my own this is what we came up with today. The gathered tulle and petals didn’t have enough give to fit over her head so I had to come up with a way to close up an open back. I refuse to put zippers in Halloween costumes so I decided to make loops and lace up the back of the bodice with black satin ribbon. This left the problem of the “hospital gown effect” in the back of the skirt. I solved that by making one more green petal and hand sewing it to one side of the skirt and putting a hook and eye closure on the other side. She also plans to wear a pair of black stretch velvet gymnastic shorts under it on Halloween.

It was a lot of fun working together on this project and coming up with an original design. This will probably be the last Halloween costume I’ll get to make for one of my girls so I had to go out with a bang!