Dream catchers

I adore Roald Dahl's work. I love his quirky language, heart warming phrases and his ability to draw you into a magic world and fall in love with his characters.
His stories give me a great feeling of nostalgia and it gives me great pleasure to share these stories with my children. My daughter in particular is falling in love with the world of Roald Dahl. One of her favourites is The BFG so I decided it would be nice to do a activity related to this.


'I is a dream-blowing giant,' the BFG said. 'When all the other giants is galloping off every what way and which to swollop human beans, I is scuddling away to other places to blow dreams into the bedroom of sleeping children. Nice dreams. Lovely golden dreams. Dreams that is giving the dreamers a happy time 


There is nothing more magical than dreams so this was a lovely topic to focus on. We wanted to capture all these lovely golden dreams and the best way to do this is with a dream catcher! 

'Every dream in the world is making a different sort of buzzy-hum music'

After a quick chat about our favourite dreams I cut little cloud shapes out of white paper and asked the children to write and draw things they thought were happy dreams.

Macey's happy dreams were of going to the circus, dancing with Kermit and were filled with fairies and mermaids. Nathans dreams were of flying in the sky, driving a tractor, visiting far away planets in his rocket and climbing in his submarine to discover the secrets deep down in the ocean.

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Dahlicious dress up day

To celebrate Roald Dahl day we decided to dress up as the peach from James and the Giant peach,a delightful story in which my daughter absolutely adores. I wanted to make it a bit more girly than the usual round peach over the head costumes I had seen so we decided on making a tutu and attaching bugs.

'James's little face was glowing with excitement, his eyes were as big and bright as two stars. He could see the peach swelling larger and larger as clearly as if it were a balloon being blown up'

I made a simple tutu using peach material 2 x the size of her waist measurement. I made a pocket along the top to thread a piece of elastic the size of her waist when streched and then stitched the ends together. I did not bother hemming the bottom because we went for a ragedy look. We then used what material was left over and ripped it up and randomly pinned them all over the skirt. I also had some pale pink shimmery net material left over so we added a few pieces of it to add a bit of sparkle. 

'Whoever they meet first, be it bug, insect, animal, or tree, that will be the one who gets the full power of their magic! So hold the bag tight! Don't tear the paper! Off you go! Hurry up! Don't wait! Now's the time! Hurry'

We then made James and the bugs using felt, googly eyes, and fuzzy sticks. We glued them onto scrap pieces of material so they would be easier to sew onto the skirt. I cut all the pieces out and Macey arranged and glued them onto the material and drew on little mouths. I thought it was nice to do the bugs this way so she had involvement in making the costume too. 

'

'So what would you call it if you saw a grasshopper as large as a dog? As large as a large dog? You could hardly call that an insect, could you?'

"Now comes, the Centipede declared, 'the burden of my speech:

These foods are rare beyond compare - some are right out of reach;

But there's no doubt I'd go without

A million plates of each

For one small mite,

One tiny bite,

Of this FANTASTIC PEACH' 

To match the tutu we used a plain green tshirt and glued black strips of material on the back in the shape of skyscrapers to represent New York. I then cut out letter using different coloured felt and used them to write James and the Giant Peach on the front and stuck a heart and NY on the back above the skyscrapers. 

'James Henry trotter, who once if you remember had been the saddest and loneliest 

little boy that you could find, now had all the friends and playmates in the world'

A dress out of this world!

I know this isn't really children related but I love my doctor Who dress and feel compelled to share.  :)

Ta Da

 I really love the rockabilly swing dress kind of style and when I found this Doctor Who material I was determined to make it into my very first homemade dress.

There is a really good pattern for beginners on BurdaStyle but I decided to make my own pattern. My favourite dress is my cherry print dress which has a perfect comftable fit so I used this as a guide.

To make a pattern I traced the shapes of each section on the bodice of my dress and added an extra cm for seams. I left out the zip at the front and the back of the dress. Instead I made a elasticated back.
I am a complete novice and have only just taught myself how to use the sewing machine so I made a mock version first using a old duvet cover. Once this was right I drew my pattern on the lining and the Doctor Who material, cut each panel and stitched them together.

front and side panels

panels stitched together

I forgot to take pictures during this project so I dont have any pictures of the back panel. The back panel was simply a rectangular panel with 4 pieces of elastic the length of the material when  fully stretched threaded into pockets sewn along the material. To finish the bodice I used black material to trim the top.

I then attached the skirt. I made this a full circle skirt and attached a frill I made with black material and lace

Tshirt upcycle - cute hanging heart

This summer I made the mistake of buying a suncream which stains fabric. If I had read the bottle I would of seen the big warning sign informing me of this. Unfortunatley a few things got ruined including Maceys favourite princess t shirt. She was really upset so I decided to upcylcle it and make her a cute hanging heart for her bedroom.

I used the heart print on her tee for the front  and  pink material and pink net to make the  back of the heart. 

I stuffed the heart with cushion filling and used gingham ribbon to hang.