kids

“When’s it my turn?
Wouldn’t I love, love to explore that shore up above?
Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world”

Ok, if you were a little girl in the 90’s, you too probably belted out these lyrics as you pretended you were a mermaid with flowing red hair and a crush on a handsome prince. Well, not much has changed since then, little girls still dream about being Ariel. She’s my niece’s favorite Disney princess, and it isn’t hard for me to imagine why. Her Disneybounding look is next!

I had trouble thinking through how I would do Ariel without needing sea shells, or something that wasn’t very appropriate for a 5 year old, but luckily I found some inspiration… somewhere… Here’s my sketch…

Materials:

Purple Tank Top
Sea green fabric – I found a fun sequined fabric at Joann’s that the little girl inside fantasizing about being Ariel couldn’t resist. 🙂
Coordinating Thread

DIY:

I decided the overdress would be at the empire waistline. Measure the width and length from the empire waistline to the bottom of the tank top. Add a few inches to the width so you can gather. Cut out two rectangles.
Right sides together, stitch together the side seams.
Run at least two lines of a gathering stitch along the top of the overdress. Gather to fit to the tank top.
Pin overdress to the tank top along the empire waistline (right sides together) so the dress is basically “flipped up”.
Zigzag stitch all the way around around, press dress down.
To create some slight gathering at the neckline, I hand-stitched about two inches down and gathered it (securing inside the tank top).

OMG, talk about ADORARABLE!! Who wouldn’t want to be a mermaid princess, really?

–h

Ok, so I promise that not all of my posts are going to involve Elsa and Disney’s Frozen. Seriously, I promise. But right now, it seems like it is unavoidable. Like I mentioned in a previous post, my niece loves to sing, dance to, and act out the entire scene that corresponds to Let it Go. It’s really quite cute and pretty darn impressive. When I was watching her go through the motions, it became clear, she absolutely NEEDS an Elsa cape.

DIY Elsa Inspired Cape

Materials:

Blue snowflake material (I used some from Joann’s)
Matching Thread
Assorted trims

How to:

Create your pattern. I decided to do a “half-circle” shaped cape to give the cape some good swirl and swish. Perfect for dancing in! Create a pattern for yourself out of wrapping paper or tissue paper. Appropriately for this time of year, I used Christmas paper.
You are aiming for ¼ of a circle for your pattern (that will fold out to half of a circle). The radius of that circle should be the length of cape you wanted. For my 4 ½ year old niece, that length was 38″. You will do a much smaller 1/4 circle at the top for the head and shoulders. The following graphic should help illustrate what you are going for…
Lay out your pattern on your fabric on the fold. Pin and cut out.

Here is the shape you are going for.
Next, I decided she needed a stand collar. I measured the opening of the cape and drafted a simple pattern (see below). I’m sure there is a right way to do this, but I just measured the opening at the top of the cape and decided about how tall I wanted the collar, and I drew a slightly curved shape within those dimensions. My dimensions were 13″ x 4″.
Right sides of collar together, sew the top and two sides. Trim seams, clip corners, turn out, and press. Pin the collar to the cape, right sides together. Sew the seam. Trim seams, press and then top stitch. This helps the collar stand up.
Next I hemmed the front edges of the cape.
Now is the fun part, trim!!I promised my niece that we would work on her cape together so I pulled out all the lace, ribbon, trims, buttons, etc. that I could find and I let her pick out how she wanted to embellish her cape. Uh, a bit of a mistake. She ended up choosing red rickrack and black sequins… With some coaxing I talked her into some silver ribbon and white lace, but she insisted on the pink ribbon for the tie. Not exactly Elsa, but you can’t blame a girl for loving pink. You can, of course, use your own judgment on how to embellish.I started with lace along the bottom of the cape and added some silver ribbon about 1/2″ above the lace.
I then attached the pink ribbon around the neck. Along with some sparkly buttons just for fun.