Superhero Fairy

Our nephew Harrison was three last weekend, and for his birthday, he had, like many other little boys out there, a superhero party. The invites had Avengers from Captain America to Iron Man and Thor, the cake had Spider Man and Batman. So many superheroes. Of course, the kids going to this party were all going to be sporting their superhero-of-choice costume. So naturally, our girls wanted to wear costumes too.

Trouble is that our girls really have no idea about superheroes at all. Mostly, they are just too young for us to show them anything that is superhero related, but they are also not really interested in them yet either. Steve and I did a big brainstorm of good female superheroes that we could suggest to them for the party. There is a sadly short list, but we finally settled on Sif (from Thor) for Sophie and April O'Neil (from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles) for Rachel (arguably not really super, but good none the less).

Then I presented the girls the ideas and hit a snag. Sophie was not keen on Sif. No matter how I phrased it or how many cool photos I showed her, she was not having a bar of it. Back to the drawing board. I googled female superheroes and showed Sophie the photos, thinking she might like some generic Wonder Woman or Super Girl costume. No. Not a bit.

Finally, I asked if she'd like to be a fairy. Yes. Yes she would. Fairies are not really superheroes, I think, but at least they help people right? So Tinkerbell it is.

Rachel's costume was easy (partially why we chose it). Yellow shirt, denim shorts and boots. All of which I knew were already currently in her wardrobe. (I did take photos, but none of them were very good. Sorry Rachel for not having photos of you. I'm sure you will wear all the elements of your costume again though, and maybe I'll take some good photos then.) Sophie on the other hand now needed a green Tinkerbell costume, the night before the party. Sigh.

Luckily my love of sewing and hoarding any hand me down fabric comes in handy. I had a bit of a green table cloth from a friend's wedding that would serve as the base of the skirt. Some shiny see through green from I don't know where for the next layer and lastly a scrap of some cool embroidered blue-green stuff from my (hold your breath!) formal dress (that my mum made).

Make these into a gathered skirt that I can just tie around her waist and put it on a green top that I accidentally washed/tried to soak incorrectly last year rendering it unwearable but that I kept because the material was still beautiful and hello Tinkerbell.

I'm not sure why my sewing stories need these epic lead-ins, or how it always seems to happen that I have them, but oh well. This costume is so far from accurate it's not funny. The greens are wrong, the style of dress is wrong, the fit is wrong. But did my little girl love it? Yes. Did it take me an hour and a half one night to knock it together. Yes.

Was she too excited (and also slightly high on a party food overdose) to stand still for a photo? Yes.