Mermaid costume endnotes

Mermaid, mermaid, blah, blah blah. Anyone who's talked to me in the past month has had their fill of hearing about sewing this costume. Still endnotes are productive for future projects, and for anyone interested in sewing something similar--maybe I can save you the time of reinventing the wheel.

So, here are a some notes on the costume making, for those of you who are interested in such things...

A few lessons learned:

• Ada's scaly blue tail was a perfect fit, but because I sewed a blue sequin border where the blue tail meets the fin, we lost some of the stretchiness of the blue scaly fabric there. As a result, Ada had a bit of a challenge walking.

• I made the cape with the idea that it was going to be cold, and, for the first time in decades, it wasn't. The evening temperature was around 68 degrees! Fortunately, the cape is something that will work for magician play, or fancy dress, and it's reversible. I'm hoping she gets more use out of it.

• As I was attaching the bodice to the scaly tail, I realized they didn't match: the bodice was too wide, and the tail was too narrow. After some reading, I realized I could probably make a few darts in the bodice to decrease the waistline. I had no idea how to do this, so--more reading. After some fiddling around with samples, and lots of ripped stitches, I got four darts into the waist, and--big grin here!--it worked.

• The biggest time-eater was sewing a lot of this by hand, from attaching all the sequin tape to putting the layers of the bodice and tail together. My hand sewing is atrocious, but maybe it got a little better with the practice...one can only hope.

• The fin was tough to fit onto the scaly tail--it flattened out at first, so I sewed a little triangular piece to each side to make it more circular (essentially I made two gusset-like pieces, I think), and then suddenly it had dimension.

• I did decorate an old pair of shoes for the costume, too. I used pale pink sequined tape, glitter, and some little shells. But because I glued all of this onto the shoe--they were too stiff! Ada shuffled around a bit and admired them, and then we decided to just keep them as a decoration.

My favorite parts of the costume:

I really love the entire cape. It's hangs well because it's got some weight to it. I used a heavier silk lining for the dark blue, and then I used batting between the layers to add warmth and heft. And I was pleased with how the ruffled collar came out. It was my first stabilized collar, and yay! It worked. My favorite part of the cape, though, are the plackets on the cape armholes. I taught myself how to make these, so I don't know if they are technically right, but I think they look really nice, and they make the cape look that much more elegant on Ada.

I lined the entire costume with a green stretch satin, and I loved the color so much I wanted to pull it through other elements. I made the piping for the arms and neckline with some of the sparkle organza wrapped around the green satin. I really liked this, and I'm going to find a way to use this fabric again.

I also used the satin to make a little tape to ruffle out around the edge of the bodice. It's tiny next to the piped border, but I think it's a sweet little detail.

The tail is really fun, and was neat to watch come together. I used four colors of an sparkly organza called "fairy dust." To make the tail, I used an interfacing base, and then added layers of different colors. Then, for the flowing part of the tail, I used unfaced bits of organza just cut in wispy shapes. We lost a few of these on the trek through the neighborhood, but that's okay--it still looked fishy!

If you are sewing your own mermaid costume, I would be happy to offer any advice--drop me an email!

Girls and Dolls Tea Party

The tea party was a success. It was all the things a tea party for dolls and girls should be, I think. Real paper invitations, real tea, real china cups, real linens, real bears and dolls.   I filled plates and plates with cookies and little sandwiches. The girls filled themselves with candy canes, sticky ribbon candy, and hot chocolate and whipped cream.

Here is what I learned about tea parties for seven-year olds:

• Fifteen girls at an inside party is equal parts exciting and exhausting. 

• Seven-year-old girls do not serve themselves tea and cookies. They wait like sweet baby birds for someone to serve them. The little tea table I set up with sugar bowls and cream and various pots of flavored tea remained untouched.  
  

• Tea is not the drink of choice for a group of little girls. We went through a gallon of hot cocoa, and two cans of spray whipped cream. One cup was filled with tea, and that was Ada's.

• Candy is a must, but not all candy will be eaten.  In fact, most candy will be tasted, or simply licked to see if it is good, and then disposed of--whereever.   Based on the number of sticky bits we found about the house, ribbon candy looks much yummier than it tastes.

• If you serve hot chocolate, you should use chocolate milk and then just heat it up in large quantities.  What you should not do is this: have your poor husband make cocoa from scratch, heat it on the stove, and serve it from china pots, especially when he will need to make and pour a gallon of it in 30 minutes.   If he does all of this, including adding whipped cream to each cup multiple times, he deserves a reward, like your undying love.  Or something else good.

• Tea time is quiet time. Quiet as in "what-are-we-doing-here?" quiet. For some reason, I had the crazy notion that they would talk to each other while they ate and drank tea, like some facsimile of Victorian ladies. No. They were ladylike, but super quiet, save for the munching of cookies. A few of them shot me strange glances over their teacups, as though they were biding their time, waiting to be done. "Just get on with it, lady," I imagined they thought.

• Don't serve sandwiches, especially not ones made with smoked salmon and cream cheese, unless Ada is your only guest, in which case you should have many on hand.

• Because not all little girls are Francophiles, don't call quiche by its French name. It prefers to be called "cheesy egg puff with bacon." It is much more popular that way. 

• Sugar cubes are as good as candy, and much more fun to eat when picked up with silver grabby tong thingies.  When dispensed this way, fifteen girls can eat almost one bowl of sugar cubes in an afternoon.

• Crafts are good and necessary for large groups of girls at parties. In my elegant planning, I had envisioned that for our 15-minute craft, I would supply each girl with a wool felt stocking, which they could embellish with sequins, buttons, and felt. 

• Free form crafts are best.  In my not-so-elegant reality, I actually only finished 4 stockings, so that changed my plans. The embellishments became the craft, and I just dumped bunches of craft materials onto our dining table. The girls then could make their own ornaments, using cookie cutters as shapes, and adding the sparkle as they wished. As things so often do, this worked out much better than my original thought, as the girls were more than ready to be done with tea, and they needed to fill an hour with crafts. Our family room was filled with cookie cutters, glitter, sequins, buttons, and giggling, and it was clear to me that 15 uniform stockings would have been a disaster.
  

• Lay out the rules ahead of time. Even the most ladylike and well-dressed girls can be lured into thinking doing gymnastics is a good and fun thing to do in someone's living room. Near a glass cabinet. Using the cushions from the couch.

• Parents can and should be encouraged to stay. Some parents did stay, and that made a world of difference for the craft time, when we needed many hands to help trace and cut felt into shapes of gingerbread men, stars, and candy canes. It also meant that someone besides Ada could enjoy the smoked salmon and tea.

• Six types of homemade cookies is overkill. While the frosted citrus sugar cookies were a huge hit, the girls were oblivious to amazingness of my gingery, crispy palmiers (with homemade puff pastry--high fives to me!). In fact, they did not touch them. I reveled in my cookie-baking prowess alone. 
  

• Tea cups as favors is a fun and good idea. I scoured thrift stores all week to find cups and saucers for each girl. Sitting on the table, waiting patiently for their guests to arrive, they looked lovely.

• Seven-year-old girls speak their minds. The teacup favor was refused quite plainly by two girls, who said "I don't like tea, I don't want your cup." Okay. Got it. 

• It is good to save your favorite cookie and teacup for yourself, to enjoy after the party is over.

• Post-party tables and tablecloths make great tent-houses for girls.

• Final lesson: Ada and Esme love having parties. They were amazing hostesses, and their smiles lit the room. Taking all that I learned into account, this should be an annual event.

What I learned from failure: NaBloPoMo

Okay, I don't really feel as though I failed, but technically, I didn't complete the assignment.

Wow. Looking at what I just wrote, I recognize it as the kind of excuse I used to get when I was teaching freshman English. Excuses like this I usually met with a firm look, a gentle scolding, and not infrequently, an extension. I was always a proponent of learning from mistakes and accepting writing as a process, and so....I'm giving myself the same benefit of the doubt.

The bottom line: I didn't post every day for a month for National Blog Posting Month. And I'm okay with it. I was going to just let it slide by and make no comment about it, but I wanted to articulate what I got out of it anyway. I love the idea of writing every day, and my writing-teacher self clucks motherhen-like and reminds me that it's really the right way to write.

I joined NaBloPoMo because I thought it would light a fire under my rear to get me writing more frequently. A public commitment is exigence in itself, a great motivator and shaper of writing. I also joined for the community, and also because I don't have the wherewithal to attempt the other public writing experiment that takes place in November: National Novel Writing Month.

Honestly, I don't think I took it that seriously. I wasn't going to beat myself up if I missed a day or two, and I didn't feel like posting just anything to meet the requirement. Because of the temporal nature of blogging, I like to post entries that are reflective of what's happening in the now in my mind and in our home. Some days in November this year were so full of NOW that I literally did not have time to write. I do think I succeeded at the exercise in one important way: I found that because I was thinking about blogging every day, I gave myself the space to think like a writer every day, to shape and swim through my morass of ideas, and that made a difference for me in how I experienced the month.

So, writing daily or not, thank you to NaBloPoMo for the opportunity to give writing a bigger space in my life, whether it's the writing I'm putting online, or the kind that's just happening in my journal and my mind. I'll be participating again soon. And maybe next time I won't be asking teacher for an extension...