The Fashion Show Project: Beautiful Butterfly Wings

Just as I'm stretching my abilities in constructing a runway-ready outfit for Sydney, Syd, herself is learning quite a lot in this homeschooling project of ours. Consumer science, I suppose--remaking an outfit is much less expensive than buying one, although much more work, and one still must conform to a budget.

Math--the yardage of the fabric is what it is, and can go only so far and no farther.

Home ec--sewing without a pattern still requires careful measurements, frequent fittings, and precision.

Careers--modeling a garment can be tedious, and a photo shoot intended to display certain views of the garment consists of certain poses, which are repeated until the photographer is pleased with the result.

Art--with a lot of work and a LOT of creativity (and a lot of hot glue), you can create an outfit that is very similar to, though not identical to, your original vision.

Syd's vision of her outfit includes not just the garment, but butterfly wings and a fairy princess crown. For the butterfly wings, I used wire hangers, a stretchy cotton sweater, a stretchy cashmere sweater, duct tape, four broken sewing machine needles, extra fabric from the pink dress, hot glue, and ribbons to make Sydney's vision real:

 
My little fashion model has the hang of the photo shoot, don't you think?
 
 
 
 
You can check out my wire hanger butterfly wings tutorial over at Crafting a Green World; keep in mind that although the tutorial is for one pair of wings, I actually used two pairs and then attached them together at the middle with duct tape covered by dress fabric for the layered effect.

Magical Math Grids

I could do some really cool things to trick the girls into learning math. I could build an elaborate gnome village, for instance, in which the math gnomes could practice fractions in the little gnome bakery, and physics on the little gnome playground, and arithmetic in the little gnome grocery store. I could draw a giant hopscotch grid on the basement floor and have the girls hop out equations. I could invent an intricate computation game with our numbered beanbags, and offer prizes for the winners.

Or I could just hand the girls a simple number grid to busy their hands at the table after dinner:

 
 These number grids (1-50 and 1-100) and blank multiplication grids are all printable math activities at Kids Can Have Fun. I gave the number grids to the girls with some markers and showed them how to skip count by coloring in the appropriate number squares, and then I showed them how to transfer those numbers to the appropriate row and column in the blank multiplication grid.

Then I let them go:

 
 
 Syd really likes goal-oriented projects, and so it wasn't long before I realized that she was not going to give up until she had filled out her entire multiplication grid:

 

Willow was less intensely immersed (Zoo Tycoon is not going to play itself, after all), but she enjoyed the challenge of filling out her multiplication grid by skip-counting in her head:

Syd, however, colored in every single square of every single number series (with me hanging out at her elbow to help her out), then transferred those numbers first to the right row, then the right column on her sheet:

 
 
 Dinner came and went, clean-up time came and went, playtime came and went, and finally we shooed her off to bed. But the next morning, while I drank coffee and read the newspaper and was available for assistance, Syd (in the same shirt she wore the day before) went right back to her work:

 And eventually achieved her goal: a complete multiplication grid:

And then the little mathematician went off to play ponies.

Construction and Deconstruction

Constructing a bunting for a local business:

 With breaks to tear up this old globe for a new project TBA:

Both should be finished today, barring tantrums by small children or the unavailability of latex primer.

A Little Green in the Grey Winter

We just needed a little touch of green the other day, and so we hiked off for a morning at the greenhouse:

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
After the greenhouse we were just sitting around on campus, and the girls could not agree on where they wanted to go next. Sydney wanted to walk home and play, but Willow wanted to walk to the library and read. I told the girls to find a compromise and figure it out, and then I sat back and read for a while.

Willow was a champion negotiator, and kept offering all these compromises: "Let's go to the library for two hours, then we'll go home and I'll play anything that you want for two hours;" "Let's go to the library, and the next time that I have money I'll buy you a present;" "Let's go to the library, and when I have candy I'll give it to you."

Sydney was having none of this compromise business, and so eventually I told her that she just plain lost due to her failure to attempt a negotiation. And she threw a fit.

But on our way to the library, hiking through Dunn Woods, Syd still throwing a fit (but silently, since silent public fits is the only rule that I have ever been able to instill in my children, pretty much), she spied something. She stopped in her tracks, squatted down, sifted through the fallen leaves next to the path for a minute, and unearthed a pristine little doll. It's some sort of litle plastic character, with a rubber dress that's practically impossible to put on and take off, just about the size of Sydney's palm.

Sydney ran over to me, doll clutched in her hand, and showed it to me, screaming, "I am SO glad that we're going to the library!"

The way home, you see, is another direction--no doll lying next to that path.

Tutorial: Cornhusk Dolls for Pioneer Girls

I can't tell you how many times I have read the Little House books. I can tell you that I read them several times as a child, always from my Mamma's boxed set. When I was pregnant with my first kid and hyper-emetic, with no relief from constant nausea for a solid month (until my midwife had a miracle cure mixed up for me at a compounding pharmacy, but that's another story), my partner lay next to me, tried not to jostle me, and read me the entire series over again. Little House in the Big Woods was the first novel that I read to my girls chapter by chapter, one chapter every night at bedtime. And when my big kid could first read, REALLY read, she watched me ceremoniously move Mamma's boxed set of Little House books down from my adult bookshelf to her child bookshelf, and soon after she was asking me exactly how Almanzo had grown his pumpkin so big, and if we could try that, too.

Just recently we've again been exploring the Little House. The Little House in the Big Woods audiobook was such a hit (even though I highly disliked the narrator's voice--sorry!) that we're now working our way through all the audiobooks. We've got some good Laura Ingalls Wilder timeline tidbits for our big basement timeline. And we've got a Little House cookbook and a Little House craft book, and we're not afraid to use them!

(Well, I am a little afraid of the cookbook, and don't tell my partner, but as the official homeschool errand man, it will soon be his responsibility to track down a particular cut of meat known as "salt pork", and then he's going to have to cook it with the kids, on account of I get grossed out cooking meat, and I definitely get grossed out cooking meat called "salt pork." Shudder.)

Of course, it wouldn't be a proper homeschool if there weren't a lot of craft projects involved. There's the model of the covered wagon that we're putting together, there's the nine-patch quilt, there's the godawful salt pork, and there are the kids' newest plaything, the cornhusk dolls.

Cornhusk dolls aren't really seasonally appropriate for February, but I pulled the dried cornhusks out from my magic craft closet, and you can either get your own cornhusks from non-local, out-of-season corn at the grocery store, or you can wait until harvest time. Or just live vicariously through me and my project, cause here goes:

If you're using dried cornhusks, soak them for maybe half an hour first.

 If you're using fresh cornhusks, you can skip this step.

Pick out three or four of the longest, best-looking cornhusks and stack them on top of each other. Fold the stack width-wise until you have a width that is a good one for your doll, and then fold the stack in half. The ends of the stack are your doll's skirt, and the folded part is your doll's head. Tie a piece of twine tightly around the cornhusks at your doll's neck.

If you're a rock star and your cornhusks are fresh, you can use a cornhusk to tie the knot, but I just used twine. I'm not a rock star, although I am a craft star.

Pick out two short but good-looking cornhusks and roll them tightly. Poke the roll through the folds in the cornhusks just below your doll's neck, and tie another knot under this roll for your doll's waist. Trim the roll at both ends to a good arm-length.

The little kid needs to trim her arms a little more:

At this point you're basically done. You can now play with your doll, or make her some clothes, or, apparently, just draw some clothes on, because it makes you pretty darn happy to do so: 

Sure beats a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, doesn't it?

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to random little towns, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Magical Carousel

It used to be the dinosaurs, but these days I think that everyone's favorite part of visiting the Indianapolis Children's Museum is riding the carousel...

over

and over

and over again:

And THEN we go to see the dinosaurs.

A No-Sew Barbie Dress, and a Young Fashion Designer

Ever since our fabulous Barbie dress design workshop at the Indianapolis Children's Museum, I have been quietly whiling away my hours attempting to create a similar design from scratch-ish. I knew that I wanted the dress to have that same simplicity and ease of construction, but knowing what you want a garment to look like isn't really enough if you don't actually know much about patternmaking.

Also, Barbie has really skewed dimensions. It took a while.

Although I still have some corrections to make to my pattern before I share it with you (it needs to be 1/4" wider, I do believe, and the hem should curve more, and I might make it a little longer), my latest mock-up was accurate enough that Sydney and I were able to spend a happy afternoon actually, you know, USING it.

Part of my intention with this pattern is to make it simple enough for even a small child to use, but I ended up cutting out and constructing several dresses all by myself anyway, because Sydney remained focused on one thing only:

DESIGN AND EMBELLISHMENT.

Glitter glue:

 A lot more glitter glue:

 It actually took this particular dress over a day to dry, on account of the two entire tubes of glitter glue that it sports.

Buttons and baubles:

 And a generous helping of hot glue to make it all stick:

And then, a fashion show!

 
 
 
I made these out of felt just so that they'd be quick and easy as a spur-of-the-moment project in which Syd walked up to me as I was working on something else and said, "Let's make doll clothes now!", but once the pattern is all settled and she's actually used it a few times, I plan to open up the entire world of my stash fabric to her, and then I think that the young designer will really be in runway heaven.