Living in Lilliput

We're celebrating Pioneers again here in Utah, and in honor of one of my favorite pioneer stories, I'm sharing a game I made for my kids a few years ago. For those of you unfamiliar with the story, when Pioneer settlers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they planted crops hoping for a harvest in time for that first winter. Just before harvest, an infestation of crickets descended on the crops, devouring everything. These were not average crickets - they were huge, menacing, rotten things and their role in this historical plague earned them the nickname "Mormon crickets," forever after. Despite all their efforts, the settlers could not save the harvest and were about to despair when flocks of seagulls came out of nowhere - eating the crickets and saving the crops. It was called the Miracle of the Gulls and is the reason the seagull is the Utah State bird even though the state is landlocked. Neat, eh?

For Pioneer Day, I made a "fish pond"style game with the magnet in the seagull's beak enabling it to "eat" the metal parts on the crickets, made out of clothes pins. My kids love it - and it's a favorite whenever I bring it to Primary, so I'm sure you want one of your very own.

Crickets:

The crickets are super fun to make, even if you don't make the rest of the game. The kids had a blast making these! Paint the clothes pins black. You could probably spray paint for speed, but my kids LOVE to paint, and I enjoyed the character it gave my bugs to have imperfections in the coverage.

For eyes, glue metal BBs in place. This took me awhile to figure out what to use because I wanted buggy looking eyes, but I also wanted to provide a metal that would be attracted to magnets so that the seagull would have a surface to grab onto. BBs worked perfectly and look a little bit creepy, while being highly magnetic. Hot glue worked fine, but after losing a few BBs, I reinforced with E6000 and haven't lost a BB since (3 years of hard play...)

For legs, cut two pieces of chenille stem. Back leg piece is 8 inches. Front leg piece is 4 inches. Thread the chenille stem legs through the holes in the clothes pin and glue in place at center. Wait to shape legs until antenna are inserted.

For antenna, cut a piece of black craft wire anywhere from 5-7 inches long. (Different lengths give different personalities). Thread through the front clothespin hole with the front leg chenille stem and put a little more glue in there to keep it in place. Hot glue works fine here.

With a pair of needle-nose pliers, round ends of wire into little circles.

Shape antenna into curls, cross them, keep them straight - whatever you think looks buggy.

Shape legs by bending at the knee and again to form a foot.

Seagull:

The concept of the seagull is a simple softie - by which I mean it's made out of felt and not turned inside out. I don't know if that's the exact definition of softie, but that's what I think of when I hear that term. So simply cut out the body and wing tip pieces. Tack wing tips to top side of body. Then with wrong sides together, topstitch all the way around, leaving an opening for stuffing. (note: the neck is the hardest part to stuff, so I suggest leaving the opening somewhere around the neck instead of trying to get stuffing through that narrow channel.) Also leave open between dots on pattern at the top of the head, indicated on pattern, to insert the beak.

For the beak, I used bright yellow lycra - simply because I had some on hand. I recommend any fabric thin enough to allow the magnet to do its thing. Cotton or poly would be fine. Fleece or Felt might be too thick. Cut the beak piece and fold along line, right sides together. Sew along edges, leaving top open, using the tiniest seam allowance possible. Turn right sides out. Insert a high-powered magnet. I used a magnetic rock my son got in a set of magnetic rocks. It works ok, but I'd like a stronger one if I can find one. If you need stuffing to fill out the beak, add it, but make sure that the magnet stays at the tip of the beak with no stuffing blocking the magnet.
Insert the beak into the opening at the top of the Seagull head and topstitch across opening, between dots indicated on pattern. Depending on how uptight you are about this whole process, you can either topstitch through all layers, closing off the beak opening, or you can hand-stitch around the circle of where the beak joins the head to keep the beak more dimensional.

I glued on googlie eyes for silliness, because kids giggle over googlie eyes. If I had my druthers I'd embroider some eyes with personality and pizazz, but hey - googlie eyes rock too.

To Make & Play the Game:

The Seagull must be attached to a stick in order that it may "fly" - then it's just like a fishing pole. Any broomstick or dowel will work. I happen to have a leg from a three legged table that is perfect for stuff like this. In fact, you'll notice that my seagull is only pinned and not permanently attached - that's because I have multiple versions of "fishing" games, and all of them use this same table leg with an excellent piece of string strongly knotted to the screw at the top. The seagull gets attached for Pioneer Day, using a safety pin, then goes into storage :) You could make a more permanent toy by sewing the string to the seagull body and knotting it to your stick.

To play, I like to start with telling the story of the Seagulls & the Crickets, using a dollar store green plastic table cloth to represent the crops. This keeps the field of play defined. On the bottoms of the crickets are stickers. When I use these for Singing Time, the stickers have song numbers on them and the cricket "eaten" shows what song to sing. For fun, the stickers can tell the child a prize they've won, or an activity they have to do (i.e. 10 jumping jacks). HINT: The magnet grabs 3 things on the cricket - the eyes, the metal wire in the chenille stem legs, and best of all, the spring that constructs the clothespin. Those are the best targets. The wire antenna were rather disappointing as far as magnetic attraction goes. They look great though, so that's something! And sometimes they'll hook the felt, and I say that counts too. :)

Happy Pioneer Day, and Have Fun!!

RED2, PG-13

RED2 is a classic caper film, despite being an action/spy movie. It aspires to be in the ranks of such action comedy quirk films as The In-Laws (1979). And as far as that goes, it hits closer to the mark than the first film. The first RED was a little too serious (with too much screaming Mary-Louise Parker) to be as much fun as it could be, and seemed to want to be. RED2, right from the opening sequence, is light on its feet and more fun. Though the theme is still Retired Extremely Dangerous, the emphasis on RETIRED, or should I say, OLD isn't played so heavy handed, which is a relief. Overall, the second film maintains most of the original charm of the first film, while improving by identifying that its primary role is humor. That being said, it's not perfect.

RED2 finds our main characters of Frank (Bruce Willis) and Marvin (John Malkovich) already under threat again despite Frank's efforts to live a normal life. ("Normal" apparently means buying in bulk at Costco, in an opening sequence designed to delight middle America). If you haven't seen RED, you may be a tad lost going into RED2, but you should orient pretty quickly. Bruce Willis is still tough as
nails. John Malkovich is, well, John Malkovich - and no one else could ever deliver a line in exactly the same way. Mary-Louise Parker is too cutsie for my taste, but is given way more material and is more enjoyable than in the previous film as she asserts herself and has more of an active role. Hijinks ensue, and characters both familiar and new become embroiled in the plot - to varying degrees of success. Catherine Zeta-Jones joins the ranks as - of all the unbelievable casting faux-pas oddities - a Russian agent. I'm sorry, I've liked her in other parts, but I could play a lot more convincing Russian than she does! And her chemistry with Bruce Willis fizzles rather than sizzles. I had to agree with Mary-Louise Parker when she repeatedly asked, "when can we get rid of her?"

The brightest new addition is Korean actor Byung-hun Lee. His action sequences are stellar, and his dry, sardonic delivery adds a much needed counterpoint to the affected cuteness of the rest of the characters. Despite the fact that my husband kept saying, "Go Stormshadow!" every time he came on screen, I thoroughly enjoyed his role and found myself cheering for him even when I wasn't supposed to be!

My greatest criticism of RED2 is how self-aware the film and actors are throughout. Let me explain it this way; any parent knows that toddlers do and say the craziest things. What makes those things amusing is that the toddler has no idea that she is being silly. An older sibling, seeing the parent's joy over toddler's quirky behavior, will mimic that behavior himself, watching his parent out of the corner of his eye for a reaction. Even if the behavior is cute, it isn't as endearing as what the toddler did because the older child knows that what he is doing is silly and he is doing it for a reaction. He is self-aware. That's the way I felt about this film. It was fun and quirky and cute, and the whole time the actors and director were watching the audience out of the corner of their eyes wondering, "are they seeing me? Are they seeing how adorably hilarious I'm being? Cause I'm REALLY adorably hilarious." And the looks on their faces when they ask this are as follows: Mary-Louise Parker - doe eyed innocent schoolgirl; Bruce Willis - pursed lipped, twinkle eyed, "I'm such a cad"; John Malkovich - eyebrows raised, "who, me?" caught-with-his-hand-in-a-cookie-jar. Why? Because those are the expressions they wear for a good percentage of the film - in too many indulgent cameos. The film was fun, but I don't think it was nearly as fun as the actors and director thought it was making it.

Overall, I give RED2 snaps for humor and wit in a time when most comedy relies on skank and snark. It could have been less affected about it, but I would still say it's worth seeing. (Especially for the 50+ crowd. Not sure why, but the half of the theater in that demographic were WAY more engaged, belly laughing throughout and raving through the credits. I liked it, but they LOVED it. So if that's you, I definitely recommend it!)

Pacific Rim is the movie that the generation of Power Rangers and Voltron was destined to make. In fact, there were moments I could swear I heard the theme songs of one or the other of those icons of childhood dramatic conflict ringing through the colossal robot-on-giant-monster battle scenes.

Don’t mistake this as criticism, however. I think that my experience was precisely the foundation the movie’s makers hoped for – and needed. This age has gone past ripe to decadent with the robot and/or alien-monster genre, and rather than try to pretend a fresh approach, Pacific Rim embraces every trope, every motif from just about any and every predecessor. And by reveling in everything from Iron Man to Godzilla, with nods to Independence Day, Men in Black, Transformers and even Top Gun along the way, the film ends up being both a roaring good time and eye-rollingly predictable.

So whether Pacific Rim bores or thrills you is going to depend entirely on your state of mind rather than on the film itself; is it cliché or is it homage? In one perspective, the stale acting, predictable scenes and “copying” of predecessors in the genre can make the whole thing feel like been-there-done-that… only with epic levels of destruction and gorgeous visual value. But on the other side, which is the way I experienced it, the aping of other apocalyptic alien monster movies and tv shows is tribute, camp in some instances, and in that spirit, I ate it up. It felt somewhat nostalgic while being a new story. And though, with a few exceptions, the acting was just about a step above Power Rangers, I let myself get sucked in. I especially enjoyed the pairing of the characters of the hipster geek scientist with an old fashioned traditional nerd scientist. Lame, dorky good fun!

So let’s get to a simple no-spoilers plot overview. The film hits the ground running – which I love. If you're going to do action, start with ACTION! Giant alien monster, Kaiju, attacks earth, but from a

dimensional rift, not from a ship in the stars. Very Godzilla footage. More monsters follow, so a new form of weapon – a suit of armor (can we give Tony Stark any credit here?) – is built to engage the enemy. This suit is so complex it needs two pilots to make it function (Go Voltron Force! “...and I’ll form the head!” Trust me, you’ll hear that, every time they deploy the robots the way they shoot these scenes). More monsters – more robots – more monsters… I won’t give away

any more of the fight-to-save-the-planet, against-all-odds, root-for-the-underdog, all-we-need-is-a-rousing-“not this day”-speech, film. I will say that this is one of the few movies I think is a must see in Imax. I normally do not enjoy 3D, but this one is done beautifully in Imax 3D - and if you don't 3D, at least the bigger the screen the better. The entire point of the movie is the eye candy of the awesome robots and detailed monsters.

On a side note, I was so refreshed by the minimal bad language in Pacific Rim. I know it is violent, so many will still keep kids away, and it’s scary, so go right ahead. But it is almost like animated violence since it is robots vs outlandish monsters – Power Rangers style. Splitting hairs, maybe, but still… Anyway the language was one of the cleanest I’ve experienced in a long time from any rating, and it felt great! I’m sure a few slipped by me without my noticing, especially from one particular character – a blackmarket scoundrel - but the expletives were MORE rare throughout, and I think that shows thoughtfulness, knowing much of the audience will be younger. As a mom, and as an intelligent person who prefers a variety of words, well done!

All in all, the film is a geek’s dream in so many details – the particular brand of humor, the homage to other works, the flawless digital effects. But if you’re not a geek, just don’t take it too seriously; roll your eyes at the poorly delivered lines and predictable plot and then ENJOY the action and opulent graphics – it’s a summer movie, not an Oscar contender!

I chose the name Living in Lilliput for my blog because of the story of Gulliver on the island of little people. Lilliput, in my definition, is the land we parent-giants must negotiate among the miniatures and their accessories. Just as that experience evolves and I learn about what Lilliput is, I feel the time has come for an evolution of this blog.

Months ago I attended a media movie screening my husband has access to through his job in radio, where I noticed I was the only woman in attendance. The imbalance was obvious enough to be the topic of preview conversation among the other critics, who laughed about how there are no “serious” female critics in Utah, only those “silly bloggers” who use their credentials to get in to the Twilight films. Having a strong background in analysis (ask my poor husband, who has to endure a 20 min deconstruction of every film we’ve ever attended, EVER), I felt a gauntlet had been thrown down and I’ve chewed on the idea of being the one to take it up. Critics have to have thick skins though, and I’m not sure I can go there. I’m still worrying the idea like a dog with a bone. And I'm posting my first movie review later today.... yikes.

On another topic, I’ve had people from different parts of my life ask if I would write down the story of my somewhat unique fitness journey. This also intrigues me, though it opens up a personal side of my life that is frightening to make so public.

And so I started planning the launch of a fitness blog, AND a movie/lifestyle blog, and I wondered and debated with myself about what to do until one day, as I was redesigning the header for this blog, my blog which I’ve written for years about being a mom, that I don’t need several blogs. My life isn’t several lives – though it is often a strange combination. (I wondered one day, as I was sewing a pioneer dress what Matt & Kim, with whom we’d hung out backstage at their concert the night before, would think of my coolness factor if they could see me at my sewing machine!) Living in Lilliput contains precisely everything I want to write about. Yes, the craft stuff, but also the books and the concerts and the films and the insanity of trying to get and stay fit - balancing it all IS living in Lilliput.

You see, before children come into the picture, single life, or even married life, is so…uncomplicated. And monotone – by which I mean that everything is of the same purpose - colored and sized and planned for adults. It's not that it doesn't have difficulties - it's just that everything happens on one plane of existence - one level of experience. Then

a baby comes. I thought that I knew what to expect. Add a cute little baby to MY life. Like an adorable accessory. I'd have to adjust my schedule, sure - but I didn’t expect someone that small would completely transform what MY life was. Let’s start out just with stuff. Regular size furniture is replaced or pushed aside for tiny chairs, tiny toys, tiny clothes that are EVERYWHERE! It is no wonder that Lilliput is the first thing that came to my mind, since whether you have one or five or ten kids, you do feel like a giant stomping around among miniaturized cups and spoons and beds…

And these tiny people are part of you, and you are part of them – until you’re not sure where they end and you begin. And they teach you more about yourself. For them you discover your creativity, or your imagination, or your love of nature, or whatever is inside you that you were too adult to realize even though you didn't and still don't feel like a "grown up" yourself and wonder when you will. Through them you remember your soul. But ironically, by remembering, you also begin to realize there is a part of you that doesn’t belong to them. You don't become a child again - you're still an adult and now you have both of these worlds within you. There must be time for non-mommy development as well as the childcare portion of life. I do NOT call it “me time.” Because there is nothing selfish about it. The description I prefer is the Covey concept of Sharpening the Saw. Doing things for our mental, physical, emotional and social health that keep us strong, capable role models for our children.

And then, there’s realizing that these little people will grow up. And they will become independent. And if, no matter how wonderful they are and how much we love every finger, eyelash and dimple, we don’t cultivate talents and joys that don’t necessarily involve them, when they have moved on, we will not be able to. We will be lost. And bored.

So it’s about balance. And in the interest of balance, I am officially re-launching my blog to expand my scope. I have, in the past, focused almost exclusively on crafting and sewing that I’ve done for and with my kids. I love this part of being a parent. (Note: I don’t love all parts – please give advice on teenage boys!) I will now begin to speak my mind a bit in posts. There will still be tutorials and craft projects galore (well, as many as I have been doing – can’t exactly call that GALORE), but I’m going to start including movie reviews when I am fortunate enough to see the screening, book reviews perhaps, some fitness stuff, anything random that I find interesting – basically some of the stuff

I do when I’m not being officially MOM.

I hope you enjoy the expanded topics and ramblings. I plan on having a lot of fun! And I’d love you to share your thoughts and experiences as well. Feel free to contribute comments or posts! This isn’t an easy journey in this uncharted land of little people – not just taking care of them, but figuring out who we are at the same time. Let’s share notes and help each other along the way.

And please be patient with me if the blog looks different from time to time - technology is hard - and I'm determined to end up with the best, most responsive blog possible for someone as non-techie as me :)

Easter and Christmas are my two big dress-making occasions every year. I like to sew in between, but the Easter and Christmas dresses occupy my mental RAM way before the actual dates. I enjoy brainstorming and designing well in advance...though I still usually end up finishing at midnight the night before! My inspiration comes from different places each time, and this year it came from the fabric itself. I found a piece of grey I loved, already had a piece of sheer yellow I wanted to use, and the rest became a puzzle of how to coordinate three dresses that were in perfect harmony without matching (not that matching is a bad thing - I just LOVE to suit each girl and end up with a total look wherein they fit together but are still individuals. I feel that I could buy matching dresses in different sizes at stores - If I'm going to the work of sewing, I'm going to take the extra time to make each one unique...plus then my youngest has different hand-me-downs to look forward to rather than wearing the same dress her entire life as she just keeps growing into her older sisters' identical dresses ;)! )

Anyway, yellow and grey are all the rage right now (I found out AFTER I had these underway. Does that make me super-hip because I thought it was chic on my own, or uber un-hip because I'm so out of touch I didn't know it was hip?), and with Easter being so early, I knew I wanted a light jacket of some sort. There is nothing more annoying than putting hours of work into a darling dress only to cover it up with a random coat! Not finding anything in pattern books, and being a HUGE fan of all things steampunk, I designed three different peplum jackets. I had to change out one of the original fabrics when I made the peplum decision, since the stripe wouldn't work with the swing of the peplum, but I was so very happy with the results all around that it made the extra fabric vexation worth the effort. Again, after getting well into sewing, I discovered that peplum jackets are on the fashion rise as well, so I'm sure there will soon be darling patterns that will make life a LOT easier for others wanting to replicate these looks :-P In the meantime, here are the patterns I used and some pics of the finished products:

Romantic Sheer Jacket over Grey Print Ruffle Dress

For my ten-year-old, I wanted her ruffles to be sweet, but age appropriate. I didn't want her to look like I was dressing her like a toddler! Choosing a lower-calf-length for the dress, and making the ruffles themselves longer (a full 8 inches each), plus the elegance of the fabric - which is a high-end apparel cotton which is a dream to sew on, achieved exactly the effect I wanted. The jacket is lined on the bodice for structure, then sheer overall and trimmed around the neck and at the waist. I do not know what the fabric is technically classified as! As much as I know fabric, I've never found this as anything but "unknown content." If anyone knows, PLEASE tell me, because I love it and I'd love to be able to order it by name. I've bought my girls everything from skirts to swimsuits made out of it and it's wonderful. Not chiffon, which frays, not tulle, which is stiff by design, not net. I call it a sheer knit, because that's how it behaves.

Detail of the vest front - I did a little bit of ruching, and used a transparent flower button. The trim was from Hobby Lobby.

Detail of the sheer over the grey - I just couldn't get enough of it! SO sweet!

The grey print fabric (from Hobby Lobby) was pretty pricey, even with a coupon, so I bought some poly-cotton in the closest grey I could find for the main skirt and used the print for the ruffles only. Saved myself from an additional half yard of the print fabric that way.

OK - getting technical - for the dress: This pattern, sleeve, bodice with the neck indicated (for all 3 girls' dresses) As I highlighted on the pattern, I LOVE, love this sleeve. I use this one over and over and over. It isn't huge puffed, can be eased to be totally flat, or you can throw a couple of gathers over the shoulder for a tiny bit of puff. It is an excellent length, excellent width around the bottom of the arm, I like how it binds it - just a great, great sleeve.

I did NOT use the skirt pattern for this, however, as it is too full to add the ruffles to. In order to do ruffles, the underskirt should simply be 1 1/2 to 2 times the waist measurement - a lovely easy rectangle. The length of the underskirt would be your chosen length minus about half the final ruffle. So if your ruffles are 6 inches each, and you want your finished skirt length to be 22 inches, cut the underskirt to be 19 inches long. Let me say one thing about sewing ruffles: I aced Calculus - I was a Physics major for my first year at college and I did quite well - I am not too bad at math - the logic of ruffles BAFFLES me!! I measured and measured and figured and figured and still ended up with something unexpected every time! So be flexible, have some faith in yourself, and be ready to curse those ruffles a few dozen times because they will drive you to distraction!

For the jacket, I combined these two patterns, McCalls 4887 and Simplicity 4337. It's pretty straight forward. Obviously I didn't line the whole vest since I left it sheer, so the turning the whole thing inside out didn't apply. I also added a 1 inch ruffle all along the skirt portion of the vest.

Little Girl Yellow Ruffle Dress with Grey Polka Dot Ruffle Peplum Jacket

For my youngest, I used the shortest ruffles for the pouffiest skirt. Cut to 5 inches, their finished length ends up at 4. No matter the girls' age or size, each skirt has five tiers of ruffles. I joked with the girls near the end of this sewing project that I had actually ended up making 15 skirts this Easter, by the time I was done hemming and ruffling each stupid little section! (my ruffler foot & sewing machine decided to have a disagreement early on and refused to work together. If I'd known, I may not have been so gung-ho for ruffles!).

To add ruffles to underskirt: I'm sure there may be a smarter way, but this is what I did - using the middle sized (6-7) dress as an example:

Figure out how long you want your ruffles. Here is where the headaches start! You'd think that it would just be a matter of taking your 22"skirt and dividing by 5 tiers to get 4.4" ruffles. However, first there is the matter of the ruffle itself losing some of that length to a hem and a seam allowance when you attach it. The formula for that is length + hem + seam allowance = finished length. But then there is the added complication of ruffle overlap. If you just assume ruffles placed end to end, your 4.4 inch ruffles will get to 22 inches - however, if you try it this way, you'll end up short. Ruffles need at least an inch overlap, which can be added to the length by, in my case of 5 tiers, adding 4 inches. (4 not 5 because the last ruffle doesn't overlap anything) So then 26 inches divided by 5 gives us 5.2 inches. We plug that into our formula:

5.2 + 1/2 inch hem + 1/2 inch seam allowance = 6.2 inch fabric strip for ruffle

Cut ruffles to be 1 1/2 x the width of the underskirt. By width, I'm talking about width around. (I found that I liked the look of it better if I increased the fullness as the ruffles went down the skirt - so by the time I got to the bottom ruffle, it was a full 2 times the width of the underskirt. I did not go back and re-do the first skirt, and I don't think many would notice which ones are which, but I do, so I thought I'd note my changes.)
Hem all ruffle sections with a tiny rolled hem.
Run a running stitch along the top of all ruffle sections.
Pulling thread and distributing gathers to fit ruffle to underskirt, and starting with the bottom ruffle, sew ruffle to underskirt - right sides together. On this one ruffle only, finish the seam by zig-zag stitching.
Next, tack the very top ruffle on, right side facing out, gathering to fit. Now that the top and bottom ruffles are on, it is easier to find where center will be.
With right sides together and the ruffle facing up - as in the picture above, tack down the center ruffle. Add the tier above and below, making sure they overlap equally.
When happy with the amount of overlap and everything looks good, press ruffles down and topstitch all ruffles except the very top one (which will be sewn to the bodice, so it doesn't matter), as close as you can to the fold.

A helpful tutorial on basic ruffling, just in case!

For the peplum jacket, I used the bodice form McCalls 4887, featured above, a modified version of the sleeve from Simplicity 4337, also featured above, and a modification of the pattern piece indicated from this Butterick 4967. Plus I added two rows of very tight ruffles at the waist for detail, one of which continues all around the neck - which is particularly cute when she wears her hair up since the ruffle stands up like a little collar. The final touch was the giant rick-rack - which complimented the polka dots perfectly!

Sunshine Ruffle Dress with Hand Colored Peplum Jacket

The middle outfit is always the most tricky. It isn't always the outfit belonging to the middle daughter, but in this case, it worked out that way. I had the oldest and the youngest all figured out, but was stumped by what to do with Chloe, who just coveted the fabric I was working on for the oldest! Print, plain? What goes with both polka dot AND elegant twoil-like print? I finally found a beautiful black, grey and white butterfly fabric at Hancock Fabrics to coordinate. As you can see, I couldn't figure out if it should be the dress or the jacket! Chloe's such a good sport! When people ask me all the time how I design - THIS is how :)

Chloe modeling fabric for me to help me visualize.

But I still had one more trick up my sleeve. The minute I saw the butterfly fabric, I knew I had to try customizing it to make it REALLY coordinate! So I did some research on the best methods of custom coloring fabric for detail work, bought the best rated fine tip yellow fabric marker, and went to town! OH! How much fun I had!! I cut out all the pattern pieces to start, placing butterflies where I wanted them and using McCalls 4887 for the bodice and improvising the peplum piece on my own as a modified circle with a long flat section in the back to form into a large pleat (very steampunk!).

After I had my pieces cut out, I started coloring in butterflies. The concept was kind of a color wash. The bodice front had every butterfly with some color, more color as it got toward the bottom. The butterflies on the sleeves were colored more sparsely - both in that not every butterfly got color, and they didn't get very much color. On the back of the bodice, I made a potentially dangerous choice to color only one butterfly right in the center of the back, giving it the most color of any other butterfly on the whole jacket. You'll also notice that a new color has been added to the yellow-grey theme! I started at first only using yellow, but from a distance, the butterflies ended up looking more like bees for some reason. I opted to pop in a tiny bit of aqua/turquoise and it totally did the trick! To pull the coordination across the girls, I also went back and colored some of Evey's polka dots too.

Pleated peplum jacket, 3/4 sleeve, scoop-backed peplum, custom colored butterflies - my favorite part of this jacket is the bright butterfly right in the center of her back!

This jacket is so perfect for my fashionista! (So sad her allergies were bugging her so bad that day!! Poor puffy red eyes!!) No two butterflies are alike.