Falinks Bag

Falinks is a Pokémon that is a bit like a caterpillar. They walk in a line but rearrange to battle. Their little side shields also move independently to cover their eyes and what not too. It also happens to be Rachel's favourite Pokémon. 

Since we've been playing Pokémon Legends Z-A, thanks to Steve's Birthday Switch 2 purchase, there has been a swing back to enjoying Pokémon from our girls. One of the characters uses Falinks as his Pokémon, and has a very cool Falinks bag as part of his costume. 

There are no good photos of it online (the one above is from I don't know where!), but Rachel drew a reference image for me and I decided I'd be able to make one for her. (I mean, Sophie has a Majikarp Bag after all.) Rachel's instructions were that it would be big enough for her "stuff" - mostly a notebook, pencils and pens. 

I just used whatever I could find in my fabric stash. Yellow fabric from a friends wedding (which I talk about in the Majikarp Bag post) made up most of it. Black and red, I don't know where that was from TBH. The shiny blue was scraps from my Princess Bride costume, and the white was a bedsheet. I also used a zip that I salvaged from one of the girls old lunch bags, and hardware from free conference lanyards. 

The whole thing is stabilized with the sturdiest interfacing ever, though I do feel like I could have added an extra fabric or batting layer to give the thin yellow cotton a bit more weight to it. 

It is, of course, fully lined and has pockets, as per Rachel's design. This blue fabric... was from somewhere too I guess! 

The back of the pouch has two loops so Rachel can slide it onto a belt and wear it around her waist. 

The sides both have lanyard clips, so there is an option of putting a strap on, or just clipping other stuff on. I was going to make a strap with the yellow fabric, but Rachel was too impatient and just wanted to get going, so she used her strap from Japan. Works the same. 

It's the cutest little Falinks bag ever. 

Organised School Painting: Ninja Skills

Organised as I am, I finished this school year by preparing for an activity that's happening in March 2025. Since I've taken over as Japanese teacher, I've run a full day of "Cultural Festival" activities, otherwise known as the 文化祭 (bunkasai). It's a pretty huge day, with all students from years one to six participating in 12 round robin activities. When I ran it earlier in 2024, we had a group of Japanese students visiting, so there was a mix of Australian and Japanese culture. Next year is all Japanese activities. 

I was inspired by another Japanese teacher to have a ninja-skills station and needed some resources to make it work. Luckily I had a bit of budget left this year and the school groundsman was willing to help me get what I needed from Bunnings. Largish pieces of MDF, a bunch of extra pine beams, some hinges and screws were the main part and then of course - some paint! 

Even more amazing than being this organised was that when the kids finished school and the staff week rolled around, I was ahead on my paperwork and had the time to spend getting this done at school in office hours. One of the groundsmen also helped me out by cutting these big circular holes in MDF. 

These ones are for the kids to throw bean bags through the holes. They will have support beams on the back to hold them up on the oval. I was pretty stoked with my ninja - especially the green one who looks very invisible from the right angle. (Notice that pink goes good with green? If you know, you know.)

My other two boards have yet to be finished - I need to add dowels to the balloons in the Pikachu one for the kids to throw quoits at. Poor Pikachu is a little fat in the face, but I think he does an alright job of being iconic and recognisable. 

I knew I'd be going for an "up in the air" theme with the Pokemon boards, so I quizzed a bunch of grade five kids in the last week of school to get ideas for who else I could put in the air with Pikachu. "Dragonite", "Charizard!", "Areodactyel".... The replies were enthusiastic but also way too tricky for me to paint. 

So I went with Butterfree, who is chasing away a Charizard through the clouds. I'll add dowels to the clouds on this board. Not too bad for ten hours of work if I do say so myself. And I got to listen to podcasts and loud music while I did it. Now to keep going with my tedama production and another activity so I'm ready when March rolls around. Teacher life! 

Majikarp Bag

Sometimes and idea is kicking around for a long time before anything happens with it, and such was the case with this Majikarp Bag. Sophie's birthday was coming up, and I had leftover orange fabric from making my jumpsuit for Steve's office Christmas Party. Perfect timing. 

I'd actually wanted to make Sophie this bag for a while, knowing she'd love it. Additionally, she often needed a bag for jiu-jitsu, but I put off making it, since I didn't have the right fabric on hand. 

All that had changed after the jumpsuit, and so with, I think, two weeks to go before the birthday, I set about making the bag as stealthily as one can. 

The bag itself was just a very simple drawstring situation, though I wanted to line it so the inside looked every bit as beautiful as the outside. I looked at a few reference images of Majikarp Pokémon online and then did a bit of sketching and planning. I used leftover orange fabric (from the aforementioned jumpsuit) some random white which was a bedsheet and yellow fabric that was still remaining from a friend's wedding table cloth set (that they gifted us before 2010 when I used them as impromptu curtains after we first moved into our house and in other places like these Madeline Costumes in 2016!).

I padded the fins to give them a bit of structure and then put all the pieces of the outer bag together. Just had to sew some fin details on in black before sewing the whole thing up. 

I was lucky enough to have the cord for the drawstring in my stash thanks to random donations from people over the years, so I didn't even need to go to Spotlight for anything. Very happy with the end result, which I photographed late at night when I finished while Sophie was asleep. 

Sophie loves her Majikarp bag and now uses it regularly as her jiu-jitsu bag. It's big enough to fit her water bottle, snack and book easily. 

Pokémon Dress

Our girls, thanks to Steve's efforts, really love Pokémon. Possibly more than is healthy. They have soft toys and small plastic ones, we borrow Pokémon DVDs from the Library, we have Pokémon books on the shelf. There is so much Pokémon. 

A friend of ours gave the girls two Pokémon doona covers as hand me downs from her brother, ages ago now. I took them apart and used half for sheets for their bed, and the other half was stashed away in the material cupboard. These holidays I took out that material and decided it was time to make something of them. Behold!

Pokemon dresses!

I used the same pattern as the other dress up dresses I've made the girls before. Not because I think these will be only dress up dresses, but because that pattern does not require any zips or buttons. So easy to make, and it will grow with them so be quite long lasting.

The skirt I cut as a circle, rather than gathering it, because I had so much material and a circle skirt is really twirly; something both girls love. Rachel's is bound with the yellow bias tape that was given to me by a lady who helps out at our playgroup on Tuesdays. Sophie's was bound with some blue that I had lying around.

The girls were both super excited about their new Pokemon dresses. I made them on the very first Monday of the holidays, which made for a very productive start to the holidays. Good feelings all around.

Lillie Costume

Rachel wears dresses. Every day. Always dresses. I do not understand how a girl who loves to climb, get dirty and find bugs can think that a dress is the best thing to wear, but she does. Every day. So it is no surprise that she chose Lillie for her Halloween costume: because Lillie wears a dress. 

Image from PkLucario at Deviant Art
©2017-2018 PkLucario

Now I may have taken some liberties with this costume. Rachel already has a white dress that she loves. And it already has scallops. Why make an entirely new white dress when she already has one? I know it's a different style, but given that she'll grow out of it, I just couldn't justify it. So I just did some blue scallops and sewed them onto the lining to peek out from under the dress. 

And it's pretty perfect really.

I thought about adding some more of the blue detail that Lillie has on her dress, but to be honest, I can't really be bothered. I'll put a blue ribbon on my hat for her. That will do.

Rachel is delighted with this, because the White Dress which I was previously very strict about when she could wear, is now the Lillie Dress and I'm less strict about when she can wear it. I don't have any photos of her in it because she is too excited when she gets to wear it and won't stand still.

Lana Costume

Sophie has had a large affection for the Pokémon Popplio for quite some time now, so when I suggested trainer costumes from the Alola Region, she was quick to pick Lana. 

Image from PkLucario at Deviant Art

©2017-2018 PkLucario

Lana has a lot of water Pokémon, and thus, a very blue, sailor themed outfit. The parts were pretty easy to make (one of the reasons I was strongly suggesting it). I even remembered to take a progress shot! I used the classic Sycamore Shorts and just lengthened them. 

For the sailor shirt, I just used a white T-shirt that we had and added the bib part. We did have a few discussions about blue hair, but thus far, no real decision has been reached.

She's super excited to have a Lana costume.

Living Vicariously Through My Children

There is limited opportunity for adults to dress up in costumes. This is pretty disappointing to say the least. So I'm officially living through my children as I encourage them to dress up any time it might be appropriate. Thus, I have already started making costumes for the girls to wear to our street Halloween party.

Even as I write this though, I'm wondering what my stance on Halloween should be. It's not a typically Australian tradition, nor is it particularly encouraged in Christian circles. To be honest, I don't even know where it came from or what it's really about. Australia seems to be jumping on board with "scary" Halloween, but everything I see from American or European bloggers that I follow has a focus much more on family activities, and fun. Costumes aren't all scary, they are just costumes. Sure, you can be a witch, but you can just as easily be a bunny, or fairy.

Given how much of a global village the world is these days, and how multicultural Australia is, I don't actually have a problem with adopting other culture's celebrations. We celebrate Chinese New Year, why not Halloween? I actually see it as a really cool way to get to know the neighbors more, and build the community in our street.

Anyway, inhibitions about Halloween aside, I'm looking forward to the fun and the costumes. I'm thinking of getting something non-edible to hand out. Maybe stickers? In the mean time, the girls costumes are underway. After all of the Pokemon they have been watching, I may have strongly suggested some trainers from the Alola region episodes. Can you guess who they chose?

Alola Friends: Lillie, Mallow and Lana

Sophie's Birthday 2018

Being true to my word, I am here to document Sophie's 5th Birthday happenings. This year, because we had only just got home from the Big Travels, Sophie did not get a full blown birthday party. She did of course get cakes though!

I made some little pokémon cupcakes for the day of her actual birthday, where we spent time with friends. I took this photo very quickly before the kids reached in to grab their cupcakes.  

Then, on the weekend, we just had family over for afternoon tea, which consisted of a fruit platter, a bowl of popcorn and cake. I figured that was enough and also that way, people would eat the rather enormous cake and we wouldn't have copious amounts of leftovers.

Again, this is a rather terrible photo, but it's the only one I have. I saw how to make this unicorn cake on the internet somewhere. It's simply a rectangle cake that you cut and rearrange. Unfortunately I managed to snap mine in half when I was transferring it to the cutting board, so it's a little out of proportion, but it worked none the less. It took a while to ice, because of the fondant, but I wasn't going to risk butter icing that would melt in the Australian summer heat. I think the feathers as the mane and tail were pretty fabulous.

Sophie was only a little disappointed that she didn't get to help with the icing, because we ran out of time during the day and I had to do it while she was asleep at night. Oh well.

Now she's five. Next year she'll need two hands to show how old she is.

Addiction Complete

The girls started playing Pokémon Go with Steve. He took them for a walk one day and then showed them how to catch things on his phone. Suddenly it was a thing. They asked to go for Poké-walks. They started to know all the names of the Pokémon. They knew more than me. Granted, all I really knew about Pokémon was that they evolved and there was a small yellow one called Pikachu, but even so!

I was a little against it at first, but it has actually been really lovely to go out with the girls on the weekends and walk around together. They love it, and we get to spend lots of time together outside. When we found out Steve was going to be away for six weeks, I knew that the girls wouldn't survive that long without a Poké-walk of some kind, so I even got it on my phone so we could play. 

It's been fun and I have loved seeing the girls expand the Pokémon into their own imaginary play too. They don't have any Pokémon specific toys, so their own stuffed toys became their Pokémon. It's been lovely beyond words, they don't need a Pikachu toy to have a Pikachu. Jungle Bear became Pikachu. The blue cow was now Snorlax. Rachel's Lady Bug was now Ledybar The little blue bear was now Squirtle. A little hard to keep up with I'll admit, but beautiful none the less. 

Anyway, given that their love for Pokémon is only expanding, I decided it was time to make them a little something. Time for sewing! 

Originally I was going to make two Pikachu, because I didn't want fights over this most-prized-of-all Pokémon, but lately, Sophie has been really into the Vulpix (Jungle Bear has even been renamed!) so I went with that. The picture below was my reference point. Sophie was very insistent that her Vulpix have red tones, not just brown. 

Image from here.

Again, I used the Racoon Tutorial from Ikat Bag, who actually has a Menagerie pattern for this kind of thing (using a base pattern and manipulating it to make lots of different things), which I should totally buy, but just haven't yet for some reason. If you are interested in making soft toys though, it's a great place to start - some of the animals are amazing!

Rachel was pretty excited to be a part of the making process while Sophie was at kindy, but then they both got to help stuff them when Sophie got home. Sophie even held Vulpix's paw while I sewed up her back by hand and whispered things like: "It's ok Vulpix, it won't hurt for long" while I did it. 

I did want to make full size ones that are good and hugable for them (like Sophie's Tiger). Sophie especially likes to be able to give them hugs, but I rationalised that these would be coming with us on the long plane rides to the States in December, and a smaller size was much more travel appropriate. I did promise Sophie that I would make a larger one when we got back though. 

The girls are both over the moon excited about all of the Pokémon making potential and delighted at their first Pokémon. I think they want me to make them all. 

Pikachu looks a little out of proportion to me, I'm not sure why, and I know I should have put the ears on differently, but didn't realise that until it was finished. Oh well. I also regret assuming no one would see the stitching and using a dark coloured thread, because it's totally noticeable on the bright yellow Pikachu. So much regret! Rachel doesn't notice though.

I used safety eyes for the first time, and love how cool they look. Installation was not as scary as I thought. Looking forward to making bigger versions and more Pokémon in general. 

Hope you like them!