And it’s Carnival time again! Not worth discuss how quickly the time passes by… Although, anyway … It’s almost March and I feel I’ve done nothing but getting used to work again!
This is the 5th consecutive year that I sew Carnival costumes for the girls, and fortunately, it’s getting increasingly easy. Lets take a walk in the past lane.
2010 – It was the first major challenge, along with my sister. miking equal costumes for me and Mafalda and a for her and my nephew. Conveniently I have no photos of myself dressed in it, but this is how Mafalda was dress that year.
2011 – It was the year of the great disillusionment. I sew another costume for me and Mafalda, a Indian Costume but the weather was terrible that day, with a thunder storm and lots of heavy rain! We didn’t leave the house and the weather was so ugly that I think neither of us got to wear the costume. So no picture of Mafalda wearing this dress that year. But Teresa wore this dress a few days ago and I got the picture. And the costume includes boots and all!
2012 – It was the first year in which Mafalda asked for a specific costume: Tinkerbell. The dress was very improvised and as a silly look, although I think it is ok. I even made the wings out of of tulle and was the first time I sewed a knit fabric in my sewing machine. No hard time!
2013 – was the year of temporary insanity. Conducted by fever “I will sew for my two daughters” I decided to make carnival costumes for both. Mafalda was living her Rapunzel year (this was the year I baked her a 1 meter hight cake like the Rapunzel tower!) And it was impossible to find a fabric with a similar color to the Tangled Ranpunzel dress. So it went lilac. The big yellow braid was easy to make but return home in pieces because went by the head of all the infants in her school.
For Teresa I wanted to make something more traditional, more inspired in my childhood and traditional tales. In my time we had fairies and princesses, police and Indians and witches costumes! Not so much of this Disney characters thing! And so I made a Red Riding Hood Costume even made an apron! The cape was a great achievement: velvet on the outside and satin inside!
2014 – Foreseeing the difficulty of making dresses for both in such short time I decided that Teresa would wear one of the older dresses and she chose the clown. Mafalda decided she wanted to dress like Teresa so I ended up having to make a clown dress. But a minute made version! I sew the dress just yesterday afternoon for her to wear this morning! No pattern. All from my head, fabric in the sewing machine and all with scraps of fabric from the original 2010 dresses! It worked because it’s a Clown costume!
Common to all years is the stress of ending the dresses on time for them to weare in school and the promise that next year is going to be different. Next year I’ll start making the costumes in January, shortly after the beginning of the year, so I can have time to make everything, in no stress! Maybe next year!
Weel! It’s all worth it!
