When it comes to costuming, the magic is in the styling and the accessories. I know, I know! It’s hard enough to make the “main” pieces. Now we have to make the cherries on top? Well, never fear! Accessorizing can be quick and easy at the Dollar Tree.

When I was planning patriotic outfits for the kids, I grabbed these bows and hair barrettes at the Dollar Tree. (How convenient that the barrettes come in sets of three! Perfect for our three girls.)

Once I got a tube of Loctite Vinyl, Fabric and Plastic Repair Adhesive, I had everything I needed to make patriotic hair bows for the girls! So, as you can see, the only thing holding these bows together is a twist-tie. I tied the ends in a knot to better secure the center.

Next, I trimmed the ends of the twist ties.

With the center of the bow secure, it was time to glue it to the barrette.

I popped a barrette out of its packaging and got ready to glue it to the bow.

I spread a wide swath of glue down the center top of the barrette.

Next, I pressed the bow onto the barrette and clamped it with clothespins to hold it secure while it dried.

The next morning, I removed the clothespin clamps, and ta-da! Hair bows!

Finished bows!

Now, it was time to use the same bows to make matching, patriotic bow ties for the boys! All I needed was another 2-pack of the patriotic bows and two packs of Headwrap headbands from the hair accessories section of the Dollar Tree. (Because I wanted to use the gold ones!)

All I had to do was to twist the twist-tie in the center of the bow around a headband!

In hindsight, I would have added a few dots of Loctite Vinyl, Fabric and Plastic Repair Adhesive to bind the bow ribbons to each other and then to the twist-tie, at the center before securing it to the headband. This is because Elliott’s bow started falling apart whenever it started twisting off of the headband. (And, this happened a few times during the shoot.)

Other than that hiccup, I have to say, these bow accessories were super quick and satisfying to make!

Time to see the bows in action! First, the hair bows:

And the bow ties:

 

 

So, do you remember those patriotic bunting aprons I made for the girls? Well, I made capes for the boys, too!

Each cape was made from two pieces of bunting from the Dollar Tree…

…and red, grosgrain ribbon. Yep. That’s it!

After opening the bunting packages, I pressed the bunting on a damp towel and with an iron on low heat.

Then, I measured the boys’ “wingspans” and overlapped the two pieces of bunting for each of them, accordingly. I stitched the bunting together, along the top edges, at the overlap points. I stitched in a rectangle, since a larger stitch area provides extra strength.

All that remained was to find a way to fasten the capes onto Elliott and Oliver! So, I threaded the ribbon through the metal grommets that were already in the bunting and tied them to the boys’ arms.

This was quick to make, but rather cumbersome when it came time to dress them. Next time they wear the capes, I will probably stitch the ribbon onto elastic loops that can just slide onto their arms.

And, voilà! Capes!

Here are my silly superheroes in their bunting capes!

In my next post, I will share how I made the patriotic hair bows and bow ties. Thank you for reading!

 

 

 

 

Short on time and money and want to make coordinated patriotic outfits for your kids? I got you! (And so does the Dollar Tree!)

I am always excited to peruse the Dollar Tree‘s seasonal items. This spring was no different, as they started phasing into stocking 4th of July merchandise.

My eye was instantly caught by these packages of individual swags of bunting. I envisioned using them to make aprons for the girls and capes for the boys. This was all I needed to go into full, red-white-and-blue production!

Let’s start with the focal material: the bunting. They were very creased when I first popped open the cardboard packaging and unfolded them.

I was wary of ironing them, because I knew the plastic material could easily melt. However, I set the iron on a very low setting and hoped for the best.

I thoroughly wet a towel, (using a patriotic one seemed appropriate) wrung it out, and lay it on the ironing board. I placed the bunting on top and started to press.

The damp towel really helped the creases to disappear, and I managed to get most of them out. Nothing terrible happened to the bunting material, either. Whew!

The bunting was quite wet after pressing, but it dried in minutes and was soon ready for the next step: trim! I ransacked my stash of thrifted, vintage lace and found enough to stitch around the bottom edge of each of the three of the pieces of bunting.

Before sewing on a ribbon sash, I removed the three metal grommets that were along the top edge of each piece of bunting. They were very flimsy and came right out with a few twists of the pliers!

Now, I could stitch a ribbon sash onto the top edge of each piece of bunting. I used this red, grosgrain ribbon from my stash.

Stitch, stitch, stitch! I left plenty of extra length at each end for tying a bow.

Here’s a back view of how I stitched on the ribbon sash and the lace trim.

Ta-da! Didn’t it turn out cute? This is seriously one of the easiest and most satisfying things I have made in quite a while. (It’s really fun to use something that’s already cut and prepped.)

What’s better than one cute thing? How about three cute things?

And, here’s the aprons in action!

Emma:

Eliza:

Annika:

Next time, I’ll share how I used the same bunting to make patriotic capes for the boys!

 

Glad Midsommar (Happy Midsummer)! Today is the Summer Solstice, which is the most anticipated and joyfully celebrated holiday in Sweden. (Or so I hear. We have yet to visit!) Since Jeff and I recently received our Ancestry DNA results (and made the surprise discovery that Jeff is Swedish, too) it seems like the right time to celebrate Midsommar on the blog!

   

So, it transpires that I am only 12% Swedish. I was expecting more, due to my heredity. For some reason, I have always felt Swedish. It’s probably because it’s a shared ancestry from both my parents and because I have many sweet stories of my mom’s Swedish ancestors, photographs, and physical objects that they owned and even made. One of my great aunts has been to the old, family home in Småland (pronounced: smoh-lahnd), so I can visualize their lives in a quaint, red house, by a river. I hope to share more pictures of all these things in a future post!

It should come as no surprise that I have been slowly and steadily collecting Swedish folk costumes over the last fifteen years! This is a photo of Emma, from a couple of years ago. I bought her costume on Tradera, which is a Swedish auction site, similar to eBay. Jeff jokingly calls it “Swede-Bay”. Shipping from Scandinavia can be expensive, so this costume cost a little over $100! (I plan on sharing my best Tradera shopping tips in an upcoming post.)

Look how darling it is, though! This particular costume is from Dalarna province, Leksand parish. On holidays, the little girls there wear yellow, flannel dresses,

handwoven striped aprons,

floral shawls and bonnets,

and little purses. (External pockets.)

This particular costume even came with a silver shawl pin and a gilt, enamel bracelet.

The pin has little dangles that are similar to their more famous cousins; the solje, which are worn with Norwegian bunads (folk costumes).

Midsommar seems to be the holiday that Swedes are most likely to wear a folk costume, especially the children. It doesn’t get more Swedish than swinging in a birch tree on Midsommar!

Since acquiring this outfit for Emma, I have also found another outfit for Eliza on eBay,

and a boy’s Leksand outfit for Elliott on Tradera.

Check out these swanky, old-fashioned, drop-front britches! (Have fun trying to go to the bathroom while wearing these, kids.)

Here they all were, a couple years ago, posing by our Swedish Mora clock (a miracle find on Craigslist).

However, now we have two more kiddos to costume, and Elliott has certainly outgrown his little boy folk costume! It takes years for me to find these costumes (and believe me, I am constantly looking) and they are expensive! Plus, I’m always nervous that they might spill on these priceless, dry-clean-only materials. What is a costume crazy mama to do? I guess we’re going to have to make our own! Stay tuned. In the meanwhile, go dance outside, eat some strawberries, and celebrate the coming of summer with your loved ones! Glad Midsommar!

 

 

 

 

The beauty of this photo shoot is that I basically threw it together in one day! How is that possible?

Well, there’s no doubt that we have more costume-y things lying around our house than the average family. We also benefit from having both girl and boy clothing to pull from, given that we have three daughters and two sons. In any case, these Newsie costumes are very attainable!

Let’s start from the top, shall we? A Newsie just isn’t a Newsie without that iconic cap!

We already owned this beautiful plaid one. Jeff’s parents got it for Elliott, in London, a few years ago. Elliott just loves this hat and he’s worn it quite a bit. It has an extra sentimental history because he wore it when we went to see Jeff as Bert in the musical, “Mary Poppins”. Was that really three years ago? What a magical, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious show that was!

Eliza ended up wearing the plaid hat in our Newsie photos (she loves red), and I bought three more caps on Amazon so our older four could all wear them when they came to see us in “Newsies”! (I kept trying to find them in thrift stores, but they just weren’t turning up.) So, I ordered this set of two, Newsie Flat Caps.

Then, I ordered a smaller Newsboy Hat for Oliver. Moral of the story? These hats aren’t cheap. I intend to snap them up whenever I find them at the thrift store, from now on. They are very versatile, so they will get lots of use in our family!

Moving right along…Here’s Emma’s outfit. Only the socks were hers. The other pieces came from the rest of the family!

Emma’s vest was one that I bought at Target and wore in my early 20s. I just took it up at the shoulders so it would fit her.

When Emma tried on the vest, I pinched it up at the shoulder seams until it was raised to a good length on her torso. Then, I stitched the vest at the shoulders.

Emma’s knee pants were a pair of long shorts that I also used to wear. I altered them to fit Emma by pinching two darts at the back of the waist. I also made them fit more snugly under her knees by moving the button at the hem farther over. This drew the tab closure tighter under her knees.

These simple alterations took mere minutes!

The darts are triangular shaped folds of material that start wide and then taper in. Normally, I would make darts taper to a fine point, but the bulky, back pockets on the shorts got in the way. Meh. Good enough for a Newsie costume!

Emma’s boots were a last-minute find! I saw a pair on Facebook Marketplace and met the seller in our Target parking lot the day of the shoot. At $5, the price was right! The zippers are not historically accurate, but boots can be hard to find. Plus, I knew they wouldn’t be as noticeable when the pictures were in black and white.

On to Elliott! In addition to his new hat from Amazon, Elliott wore a thrifted vest, boots, a pair of my socks, one of his own shirts, and his Pilgrim pants.

Eliza wore one of Oliver’s shirts, an old vest of Elliott’s, thrifted boots, and some shorts that I turned into knee pants.

The shorts came from our YWCA thrift store. Green tags were 50% off, so the shorts were actually $1.50! The hems were double-stitched. I simply took my seam ripper to the lower row of stitches, and made a small opening in the upper row. Then, I took some thrifted elastic and fed it through this make-shift elastic casing with a safety pin.

This is definitely the fastest and easiest way to make short pants or breeches!

The downsides to using elastic are: 1. It’s not historically accurate. 2. The activity of the wearer causes it to ride up, as you can see, here!

Oliver’s outfit was the most colorful, although you can’t tell in the black and white photos! He also wore his Pilgrim pants.

We ran out of vests, so, I decided to break in the suspenders that he’s going to wear in my sister’s upcoming wedding! (Emma was also wearing a set, hidden under her vest.)

Annika wore one of Oliver’s shirts and some shorts that I took in by making a small pleat at the hem of the inseam. Her vest and boots were thrifted and the hat is one of mine!

And that, my friends, is how I put these outfits together!

Here’s a look at our Newsies in full color!