Happy Halloween!

Halloween is my favorite holiday. I've never carved a pumpkin before though, until some friends got me to do it this year. Came out pretty neat!

There's always ghosts touching you

I found this super cute ghost fabric the last time I went to the $1.99 Fabric store, which is soon to be $2.99.

Nooooooooo ~

I mean, that's still good.

The fabric is very soft and sheer, so I decided on one of my usual designs - a bubble skirt. Once I had the skirt, I thought I should have a matching top... and (what a surprise) I made one.

"What is your favorite color of kitty?"

"Green"
"Sage or lime?"
"Sage"

Ah yes, the classic sage colored cat.

One of my friends always says he wants a kitty when I ask him what I should bring to his house or buy when I'm out shopping. His birthday is coming up, and since I can't bring him a real kitty, I thought I would sew one.

I spent a while looking for a cute kitty plush pattern or tutorial. I found a couple, but they weren't really the style I was looking for, or were too pricey for how simple they were. Eventually I came to this one on Etsy. It was sold out at the time, but the seller was great and re-listed it when I messaged her. This pattern is so cute! It's exactly the kind of thing I was looking for, and it was only a couple bucks. If you want to try it, know that the instructions are in Japanese. Some parts took some figuring out, but it went together pretty well, especially considering I've never really made plush toys before.

For my kitty, I started by printing the pattern at 125% because it seemed a bit smaller than I wanted. The pattern suggests a woven fabric without stretch, but I wanted to use fleece, so I backed it with iron-on interfacing to add some structure. I stuffed it with poly-fil and embroidered the face instead of using fabric for the features. I completely spaced on adding the face before putting everything together, so you can see my thread ends, but I don't think it looks like an obvious mistake. I also used buttons for the eyes.

You can see how big it is based on my hand. It's about 6 inches long, and 6 inches tall.

I worked on this late into the night, as I tend to do, and when I went to take pictures of it later on I noticed the buttons were two different sizes and slightly different colors. Well, dang. You can kind of see this in the picture below:

At least it was an easy fix... except now I've stared at this cat so much I'm not sure I like the button eyes at all...

Ah, there we go. Just Photoshop those things out.

"What's a good way to get some tentacles without making too much of a production of it?"

One of my friends recently had a "crazy" idea to dress up in tentacles. She drew me a picture, suggesting that this is probably a weird thing that won't work out the way it looks in the picture.

It really didn't seem all that unreasonable to me, so I offered to make them. I looked around at "squid plushies" to get ideas for construction and we picked out some fleece and minky fabric based on what I'd seen. The house got pretty thoroughly coated in minky fluff (if you've never worked with it, it sheds like crazy when cut) but the tentacles came together nicely.

As you can see in the drawing and in the final costume images, the outfit consists of a tentacle belt or skirt (whatever you want to call it), sleeves/arm warmers, and a collar.

"You have to wear a bell so I can find you if you run away and hide under a car"

You know, like a cat would.

Since I put together this witch outfit for myself for a Halloween party, and my boyfriend likes it when I dress him up, I wanted to make some sort of matching "costume" for him. We decided on kitty ears and a tail (he also has a collar with a bell on it, so he doesn't get lost of course.)

This isn't my boyfriend, clearly, but he wasn't available when I took the photos and Bria here agreed to help (thanks Bria!).

I used the same pattern for the ears as I use for my animal hats, for example these or this one. They are a layer of fleece, interfacing, and faux fur, sewn together then attached to a headband. For this set I also added little bows. We have a bit of a joke going about having bows on everything.

I free-handed the tail. It's a rectangle with rounded ends, about 24" by 7". There's a belt loop on the end that can also be safety pinned on if you're not wearing a belt.

iPad Quiver 2.0

This is really like the 8th version of the "iPad Quiver" because it took a lot of figuring out last time I made one. Somehow even with the previous one to use as an example, I still had a hell of a time getting this to go together the way I wanted it to. I think maybe I have it now... At least I hope so.

What is an iPad Quiver you ask? It's a pocket that hangs off your belt, lined in a soft suede-like material and large enough to hold a tablet (originally the iPad Mini, as shown in the post linked above). The idea comes from my friend Kelly, who uses his iPad as a phone and therefore needs to carry it around all the time.

He's gotten stopped several times by people interested in knowing where he bought his iPad case, so I decided to make up a version for the Etsy store. I used black twill for the outside and something like micro-suede in gray for the lining.

I didn't have an iPad mini on hand so the above picture shows a Nexus 7. It's slightly smaller, but not so much so that this case doesn't work. I'm planning to use one just as an extra pocket for my wallet/keys/whatever when I don't want to carry a purse.

On the original, I had three belt loops. I don't think this is really necessary so I did two instead and made them out of a stronger webbing.