So I cheated a little on the shirt. I saw a yellow shirt on the super-super-sale rack at the department store and bought it for $6. It isn’t perfect, but after extensive internet searching I couldn’t find the yellow with red square pattern that he wears in the movies, so this was an easy fix.
I just sewed on extra-large buttons to make it more cartoony and match Woody’s shirt a little better…
To make Rose’s Jessie the Cowgirl Shirt, I started with a plain white longsleeved shirt with a collar. Jessie has some yellow paneling on the front and some big cuffs, so I thought it should be pretty easy to mod a thrift store find. I sketched the shapes for the yellow fabric onto a paper grocery bag, and cut out the material.
I thought I was going to do fringe on her sleeves, (the white fabric above) but it just didn’t look quite right and also had the potential to be a pain in the neck, so I decided to skip it. I also cut out some interfacing so that the cuffs would stand up a little more and look cartoony. Then I stitched on some red cord resembling the pattern from her costume in the movie. I freehanded it, so it isn’t perfect. And I bought three yards of cord (usually I am a chronic overbuyer, and have two giant bins of fabric from other projects in my basement, which enabled me to only spend the four bucks on the cord to make this shirt) which was only barely enough. I would have liked to have a little more for the cuffs, but as I usually craft well after the fabric store closes for the night, I didn’t want to break my momentum so just used what I had.
I really like how it turned out. Then I sewed everything together and attached some giant buttons to complete the look. I need to find another ring for the back, since she’s a pull toy. (See the Woody vest post here and here.)
We ordered the hat from the Disney store. Rose is going to look awesome. I am so excited for this set of costumes, since we will have Woody, Jessie, Buzz, Sid, The Prospector, Ken & Barbie, Zurg, Mr. Potato Head, a Pizza Planet Alien, and the Pizza Planet Delivery guy. Should be pretty epic. Now I just have to work on Rose’s Harry Potter robe for when we visit the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. She wants a quiddich robe, even though Hermione never played quiddich and Hermione is her favorite character in the book. But I made one for Dillon last year, and so I could probably muddle through again. Should have blogged it better, or at least kept some notes, but I’ll figure it out.
So, I was trying to think of something I could make as party favors for Rose’s birthday. Money is tight (though it always seems to be at this time of the year) – so I was trying to do her birthday on the cheap. And since her heart’s desire was to have a couple of girlfriends sleep over and watch Mary Poppins, the party wasn’t going to be spendy.
I looked at a great book, One Yard Wonders, for ideas, because I knew I wanted to make little purses for them. And I have two bins of fabric remainders (even after donating five plastic grocery bags full of scraps to the kids’ school for art projects they were doing). So I figured I could scrap some purses together for the six girls at the party. I found the perfect thing in the book, and then just scaled it down a little to be more of a kids’ size. I cut a pattern out of a paper grocery bag by drawing a circle that was an inch bigger than what I wanted for the purse, and then extending the line off the side and flattening the edges. I got Charles to pull apart some links off a chain for the metal connector, then made the purse straps to fit through the chain link, which wound up being a little wider than one inch.
I picked out some fabrics for the outside of the purse, and a contrasting color for the lining. (After doing tons of fancy gowns over the years I have so many satins to pick from, which make a lovely lining.) If you want more detailed instructions, comment or message me, and I can break it down a bit further, but it wound up being really easy to put together, so you could probably just fake it. I gathered the bottom of the purses a little to scrunch them up a bit more, and the tops don’t really close, they are just held sort of closed by elastic. But I like the scrunchiness of the bags, and I think they turned out super-cute.
I also attached a little flowery flair to some of them (a la my crafty fundraiser post, just minus the hair elastics) to spice things up a bit, and they were pretty and simple to put together in a couple of evenings.
Best of all, I had a party favor that the girls loved, and I didn’t spend a dime on! We threw in some Mardi Gras beads that Aunt Jackie sent Rose a huge box of, and a fruit roll up, and a couple of leftover hair gadgets from a prior project, and called it a day. And Rose’s party was awesome. The cake that her Nana Joyce made her was really amazing as well. I can’t give you tips on how to do it, but there is a picture here.