Girls Night Out

Tonight is the night! I will be at the Yard in Park City selling my wares for the “Girls Night Out” Shopping Bazaar for the Park City Day School.

Can’t wait!

-Tara

Good Eats Roast Turkey on the Food Network

Time for the Turkey Brine!

If you are tired the same old dry turkey on Thanksgiving, try this recipe from the "Good Eats Guy" Alton Brown.

Good Eats Roast Turkey on the Food Network

It is fantastic and so easy to prepare.

So I go now to the kitchen for the next two days working on creating a feast for my family. We have so much to be thankful for this year, especially being together. Today is also very exciting because my nephew returns home today from a 2 year church mission in Chile! We are so excited!!

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!

-Tara

Rapunzel Costume: The Bodice

All right this has to be quick because I need to get back to work, but I wanted to give you a sneak peek of the bodice…..

 

I have added embroidered lace, metallic trim, and decorative stitches to give the appearance of a corseted bodice. (big grin)

I am off again to my sewing room again. Thanks for stopping by!

-Tara

Happy Birthday T

Yep it was my birthday Monday and my sweet eldest daughter baked me this delicious pumpkin cake with cream cheese frosting. Sooooo good! Click on the picture for the recipe. * note the applesauce substitution in the reviews.

 

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/pumpkin-cake-ii/detail.aspx

She was also so sweet to put ALL the candles on the cake. I’ll save you the trouble of counting, there are 36.

I feel very blessed to have a wonderful life with the best family, amazing friends and a faith that makes the realization of that possible.

Many thanks,

-Tara

Rapunzel Costume: The Fabrics

 

All projects begin with inspiration. When it comes to the Halloween costumes I make I try to immerse myself in the “art” of the character or concept the costume is based on. I’ll read the book or have the movie playing while I am sewing. I’ll search around for images. So right now on the wall in my sewing room you will find these…

and these too..

I also play all my other Halloween favorites, such as Tim Burton’s The Corpse Bride (all time fav), any or all HP’s, Beetlejuice, Penelope (another all time fav) and of course the classic Sleepy Hollow (the Disney cartoon version). It’s fun stuff!

I always need one fabric that starts it all. Like a these, it is the one element that all elements relate back too. For this costume it was this beautiful silky two toned fabric. I chose it for the color! It changes from pink to purple to periwinkle and lilac. It’s amazing! Just really pretty and interesting. It is going to be used in the underskirt, sleeves, and the bodice insert.

 

Next is the bodice fabric. I am a huge fan of Dupioni Silk! I love its muted sheen and texture. This fabric is also two toned. The blend of fuchsia and teal woven together creates this vibrant purple.

This is the bodice fabric. YEA!

I am going to use the following fabric for the overskirt and for layering the upper sleeves. It is a sheer pink with pink ribbon design. This will add fullness and sparkle to the dress.  

Gold Lame’ will be used for piping in sleeve details.

 

There are the fabrics.

Now let’s talk trim. Trim is an often overlooked element, but I think it makes a huge impact like accessories do for an outfit. But I will warn you it is easy to spend in trims what you do in fabric, so have your coupons ready!

This pretty embroidered metallic lace will be on the cuffs of the upper sleeve and on the opening and hem of the over skirt.

The upper sleeves will have bands of pink satin piped in gold with a jeweled trim. Remember I said in the previous post this was Rapunzel’s dress…on steroids. : )

There are more fun trim elements that I will be adding such as flowers, ivory lace, and other gold trims so …….

stay tuned and wish me speed!

-Tara

Rapunzel Costume: The Sketch

Ok....I am embarking on Gigi's Halloween costume! Woohoo!

Today you get to see the sketch...

I know it’s more like the Rapunzel dress……on steroids. I really LOVE this movie (save two things). Her SHORT, BROWN hair at the end. Her hair was like another character in the movie and I was sad to see it go. Rapunzel looked like a completely different person. Why couldn’t Flynn Ryder cut her hair just a little bit longer instead of giving her that wispy bob that is sooooo 2002! Grr!

But I digress.

This sketch is based off of the Disney 1 of 2000 Deluxe Costume or as I would call it “What I would have like to see her wear at the end of the move” ;) 

Tomorrow, I'll show you fabric and trims! (squeal)

-Tara

Pumpkins

Another favorite of the season. Pumpkins! They are perfect for soups, pies, cakes, cookies and the creative possibilities are endless when it comes to decorating with them. Today I am talking about carving.

I remember when carving pumpkins was done with a kitchen knife. It was pretty limiting in what you could do. Then came Pumpkin Masters! The first year my sister and I discovered Pumpkin Masters carving tools we went nuts. I think we carved 20 pumpkins!! It was so much fun.

Since then, every year we carve a lot of pumpkins. Some patterns have become yearly favorites. Here’s a tip. If you love a particular pattern, scan it. Scanning them is great because you can re-use your patterns and you can resize them specifically for your pumpkin.

This one is a cheery classic:

Or how about this spooky favorite:

This one is called “Highly Perturbed” I love his flaming face. After carving this face 3 or so times I thought I should immortalize this one and try …..

(the sound of fan fare)

The carve-able craft  pumpkin! These are great. They are light weight, easy to store and you only have to create it once.

I am a fan on the Celebrate It craft pumpkin sold at Michaels. Their paint doesn’t chip like “other” craft pumpkins. By now these are at least 50% off. The one dilemma I had was how to carve them. I attempted it once with a pumpkin saw, but that was messy and a LOT of work. It ended up being more time consuming than carving a real pumpkin. I tried the saw sold with the craft pumpkins but didn’t find it to be any better. So I researched online about the best way to carve craft pumpkins and found a recommendation for this tool:

I purchased this electric hot tool from Joann's. It retails for $30.  It comes with seven tips: one straight cutting point, one hook cutting tool for details, two for soldering: cone point and square tip and three wood burning tips: tapered, texture-n-tone and mini flow points, lead free solder and a tool stand. for carving the craft pumpkin, I used the straight cutting tip that looks like an Exact-o-knife.

Okay, this tool, was AWESOME!

I carved 6 or 7 craft pumpkins in one morning. This tool cuts these craft pumpkins like butter!

 

I was so excited to create pumpkins with this phrase inspired by the 1962 novel by Ray Bradbury and also the choir song in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

You can come up with your own pattern ideas. I printed the phrase from a word doc. I created on my computer. I used Burton’s Nightmare for the font. The pattern for the “wicked” pumpkin was from an image I found online. There are a lot of pumpkin images online that you can use to create pattern.  Essentially the carved portions are the highlighted areas and the remaining part of the image are the shadows. Here are a couple that I found..

“Thriller Pumpkin”

“Twilight Pumpkin”

As a huge Corpse Bride fan, here are two more that I would like to attempt…

 

Victor                                         Emily

Happy carving!

-Tara

Gordgeous!

Enjoying October?

This created endless giggles for my children!

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Gordgeous!

Some great pumpkin ideas coming this week…

-Tara

Costume Makeover: From the Girly Girl to the Tomboy

It never ceases to amaze me how different my children can be from one another. My two oldest daughters are a prime example of this.

Sara, total girl! From age 3-6 she insisted on wearing a dress every day. Really. The fact Sara means “princess” is so apropos.

Elena, my second daughter, would only put a dress on for Sunday and even then it was a struggle. Her preference was for jeans and superhero costumes.

 

You can imagine the problem with hand me downs. When it came time for Sara to pass on her clothes to Elena, Elena would look just look at them and say, “No way, I’m not wearing that!”

It was always a challenge to accommodate their personalities and make the most of their wardrobes.

In 2006 I made this costume for Sara.

 

She was Marie Antoinette.

I loved this costume! It is still one of my favorites of all the ones I have made. I really wanted to get more than one year out of it but I knew “Marie” would be a tough sell on Elena once she could fit into it in 2009. With some thought for Elena’s interests, I was inspired by Pirates of the Caribbean and Elizabeth Swan. Elena loves this movie. Here’s what I did using the same dress:

Tip: It’s all in the accessories!

- I bought a plain black velvet pirate hat from Value Village and dressed it up with inexpensive laces and a left over piece of a gold filigree iron-on from another costume.

- I made a pair of pantaloon bloomers with lace and ribbon at the bottom and added two strips of ribbon to the inside and outside of the dress at the top of the shirt. This allowed her to tie up the front of her dress for some swash buckling!

- Added “cuffs” made from gathered fabric to her pair of black boots.

- Bought two belts from Value Village that had interesting buckles and studs on them. One red and one black. I tied one around her waist to hold her pistol and the second across her torso to hold her sword.

Here she is, Elizabeth Swan. I was so excited with this transformation!! Elena loved it too which made it that much better. She even came up with the idea of putting an earring of mine on a chain to make her own pirate medallion.

The result: One dress, two completely different costumes for my two completely different girls.

Which one is your favorite? I can’t decide.

-Tara

Fretwork

I love when I see something I want to make. It happens a lot, it’s true, but I get pretty excited when challenged with something I have never attempted before. Not long ago my friend, Autumn pinned this pretty pillow.

This is an Aegean Fretwork decorative pillow from Inside Avenue that retails for $345 (yikes!) Good news though it is on sale for $240 (stifling a derisive cough). For that price this pillow better offer the choice of Swedish or shiatsu while I lean against it. Although at that price I would have to stick it in a glass case like in a museum to keep my five children from even breathing on it. :)

Ok, so now for the really good news: You can have this look for much less! I was really excited to try this. I used an ivory grosgrain ribbon and black linen inspired buy this Millcreek print.

My tools were a gridded mat, a quilter’s ruler, and plenty of pins. I cut my fabric using an acrylic template I had made, and a rotary cutter. This gives a really clean straight cut.

My first attempt to create the pattern with the ribbon first didn’t work. I figured that out pretty quick. Instead, what did work was measuring and pinning the ribbon to the fabric, creating the pattern as I went. The trick is to fold the fabric on itself, pin it at an angle just shy of the 45 degree line. This allows the ribbon to conceal the excess ribbon underneath when opened. Once you have pulled the ribbon open to a right angle pin again.

Continue to measure and pin so that the pattern is symmetrical. Measure, pin, repeat.

 

Then topstitch the ribbon down to the fabric staying close to the outside edges. I also topstitch the mitered corners. Another tip is to draw out your design with measurements first. I made a rough sketch like this:

 

This will help you create the pattern with exact symmetry. Here is the finished Aegean design. I have to admit, I was feeling giddy at this point :)

To give it a really sharp look, I decided to frame this design with a welt also in ivory. Here’s the finished product… for a lot less. It’s $75 for a 20” square pillow cover. Get it here.

I used a 22” insert in the pillow cover for the pictures. I like to get my down pillow inserts from Ikea and Crate and Barrel.

 

I can’t wait to try different pattern and color variations such as these:

So, when you see something challenging you want to try, I say go for it. Something new just might be your new favorite thing.

-Tara