Hello, costume friends! In my last post, I shared how to make this DIY Manta Ray Hoodie Costume. Hours of photo editing later, I am sooo excited to share our Lake Chelan photo shoot of the finished costume!

So, take a stroll down the dock with us!

When taking photos of our kids, I’ve learned that it helps to let them “play” a bit. This allows them to relax and get accustomed to the feel of the costumes. Of course, sometimes we’re really in a time crunch and this is harder to do!

It was a treat to just follow Elliott around and spend time seeing the world through his eyes. Or, should I say, “Manta Man’s” eyes?

This manta ray is catching some sun rays! I love how the light plays on the velvet “pile” of the hoodie material. Fabric selection is key when it comes to turning something ordinary into something extraordinary!

To add to that, I don’t limit myself by age or gender categories when I’m thrifting for raw costuming materials. Was this hoodie in the boy’s section? Nope! I want to write more about this, in the future!

Lake Chelan is a magical place. Especially at sunset!

This picture reminds me of a ray leaping from the water! To see stunning footage of real rays leaping and even somersaulting through the air, click here.

The “Queen Bee”. What a cute, little fishing boat!

Still water and a quiet moment with my oldest son.

“Manta Man” is on lifeguard duty!

Ready for take-off…

Golden glow over golden hills, with my golden-haired boy.

Duckies!

We decided it was probably best not to actually swim in his costume…

With the sun continuing to set, it was time to head back.

It’s hard to say “Good-bye” to the lake after such a gorgeous day!…

…

Isn’t he angelic? Could there possibly be any bloopers from this photo shoot?

Of course!…

…

Until next time, lovely lake!

“Jump!”

To see how I made this costume, please click below for the detailed tutorial:

• DIY Manta Ray Hoodie Costume

Until next time, friends!

Wanna wow your kid? Take a humble hoodie (or a fancy velvet one) and convert it into a wearable, costume version of their favorite critter! This is especially fun if their “spirit animal” is a bit obscure.

For example, our second-born, Elliott, (superhero alias “Manta Man”) has loved sting rays of all sorts for several years. Here he was as a newly-minted seven-year-old at Lake Chelan. What a cutie! I mean, cool dude. (“Cool” is the new “cute” when you are a grown man of seven.)

I really wanted to make Elliott a special costume to celebrate his seventh birthday and his deep, deep love for rays. So, I went to Goodwill in search of inspiration and raw materials. As usual, it did not disappoint!

I couldn’t believe my luck in finding this magical, teal blue hoodie in stretch velour. Its crushed, multi-directional “pile” gives the material incredible softness and sheen. (Which is also why it photographs so differently in nearly every shot!)

First of all, I had “Manta Man” try on the hoodie. I was glad to see that it was a bit big. I was pretty sure I could open the sleeves to convert them into the ray’s pectoral fins. It took some examining and brainstorming, but I figured it out! To widen the sleeve, I cut it straight up from the underarm seam to the top of the shoulder, careful to only snip through the top layer of the sleeve.

Then, I smoothed the sleeve perfectly flat and pinned it along its underarm seam. Stabilizing it in this way allowed me to easily slide the scissors down the top of the sleeve, snipping it open as I went.

One sleeve open!

Next, I repeated this process to open up the right sleeve. I checked the shoulder measurement to my first cut on the left sleeve, so that both sleeves would match. Then, I pinned the right sleeve and cut it open. (Please excuse my jankity eczema fingernails. It took getting a low-dose steroid shot in my derriere to finally help me get on top of my crazy hand problems. GAME CHANGER. 10/10 would recommend!)

At this point, I asked “Manta Man” to check my progress!

Things were looking good, so I asked to borrow his stuffed manta ray to help me visualize how to fashion the sleeves into sweeping, curved fins.

Of course, I could have just done an internet search for manta rays, but nothing beats having a 3D object to study and manipulate!

Before shaping the sleeves, I decided to remove the ribbed cuffs and use them to create “handles” inside the fins. This would allow Elliott to hold onto them from the inside and keep the fins stretched out.

Snip, snip! This knit material doesn’t ravel, so I didn’t worry about hemming the sleeve edges.

Before plotting the sleeve cuts, I folded the hoodie precisely in half, lengthwise, so that I could cut both sides at once.

To achieve the desired shape, I trimmed a an angled bit off the top of the sleeve and a larger wedge from the bottom. Then, I flipped the larger wedge 180° to re-attach it to the base of the fin. This would widen it and augment the curved shape.

A quick seam in zig-zag stitch did the trick.

Okay! Back to those hand straps. As you can see, I jumped around a bit on this project. (That’s what happens when I’m making something up as I go along!)

I only needed one of the ribbed cuffs to make both hand straps. First, I cut it in half and zig-zag stitched each side to the wrong side of the sleeves. (The last, bottom-right image shows the stitching from the right side of the finished costume. It’s barely noticeable.)

Time to make the ray’s white belly! I found the exact middle of the hoodie, lay it on top of some white polar fleece, and pinned it at the top and bottom of this center line. Then, I spread out my newly-created left fin and cut the fleece to match its shape.

 

I transferred the center line pins from the hoodie to just the fleece. Then, I folded it in half to cut around it and make the right fin.

To attach the belly to the hoodie, I pinned the right side of the fleece, down the top edge of the fins, to the back side of the hoodie. Then, I did the same along the bottom edge of the fins and stitched.

To put the belly back to the front of the costume, I pulled the fleece panel over the top of the hoodie, which turned the seams neatly into the inside.

Now, it was time to attach the bottom sides of fins to the sides of the hoodie and then to the belly.

Here are some images of the finished fins, to give more views of how they were pieced together. It’s a bit hard to explain! There’s a bit of puckering along the side seams, but I decided it wasn’t noticeable enough to re-do them.

Now that the fleece was flipped to the right side, I turned over and pinned its raw edges at top and bottom. Then, I asked “Manta Man” to model it to make sure that everything looked good.

After verifying that the fabric layers were smooth, I zig-zag stitched across the top edge and bottom hem of the fleece belly panel.

But, of course, not before Eliza “helped” me with some of the pinning!

With the main body of the ray complete, I could turn my attention to the distinctive add-on pieces. Check out this blue, stretch velour I happened to have in my stash! I still remember finding it at a yard sale, way back when Emma and Elliott still rode in our double stroller. Bonus surprise piece of purple velvet rolled inside? Yes, please! *Sets it aside for a future project.*

This is the point where I would normally make a paper pattern/mock-up for the tail. However, I decided to just fold a bit of the material in half and eyeball it! (I’m trying not to second-guess myself, so much.) I re-folded the tail, lengthwise, with wrong sides together. Then, I zig-zag stitched down its length, leaving the top open.

I turned the tail right side out and stitched it to the base of the hem, on the back of the hoodie.

Now it was time to tackle the part of the project that intimidated me the most: Creating those alien-like cephalic lobes protruding from the ray’s head. (And, yes. I had to look up what they are called!) Fortunately, Elliott had more ray toys to guide my design process.

There was no way I was going to “wing it”, as I did for the tail. This was going to take a bit more experimentation. I lay the hood of the hoodie on a piece of printer paper and traced around its edges. Then, I sketched a series of lobe shapes to test and compare as potential pattern pieces.

At this point, if you feel like this array of shapes is kind of awkward-looking and you want to giggle…You are not alone. *Ahem*.

Moving right along…I settled on using the smallest shape. As ever, my faithful apprentice, Eliza, created her own “pattern pieces”, alongside me.

Next, I traced my pattern piece of choice onto a folded piece of paper to generate two of them. I figured out how long I wanted the lobes to be, and generated another set of pattern pieces that would have curved bases. (These would be the interior, white part of the lobes.) These curved lobe bases were designed to be attached to an elongated oval shape that would lie across the top of the head.

It always feels so good to be done with creating pattern pieces! I used them to cut two exterior lobe pieces out of the blue velour, one center piece, and two interior lobe pieces from scraps of the white polar fleece.

I recently replaced the foam pad on my ironing board and saved the old one for such a time as this! (“This” being the need for some padding/stiffening in costume pieces.)

So, I cut another set of all of my pattern pieces out of this thin foam. Then, I zig-zag stitched a foam piece to the wrong side of each of the corresponding fabric pieces.

This anchored each of the fabric and foam pieces together, before stitching the cephalic lobe sections together.

Placing right sides of the fabric together, I pinned and stitched the blue, outer lobes to the white, inner lobe pieces.

Then, I turned the lobes right side out and stitched the white interior to the white center piece.

To help the lobes stand more upright on top of the head, I decided to enhance the curve at the base of the white, interior lobes, where the seams join them to the oval, center piece. Stitching this tuck in the material pulled the lobes upward.

If you’re still reading, congratulations! You’ve made it to the final step! I hand stitched the assembled cephalic lobe piece to the hood of the hoodie by turning the raw edges under and catching it with small, “invisible hem” stitches.

To do this, I pinned the front edge of the cephalic lobes piece to the front edge of the hood. As I went around the base of each lobe, I continually checked and adjusted the hood material so that the protruding pieces would look even on either side of Elliott’s head.

Eliza helped me with this step by pulling the needle through after I inserted each stitch.

Sooo close! I used a measuring tape to check the placement of each lobe piece for side-to-side symmetry. Additional stitches down the white, interior seam of the lobes helped them to stand even more upright.

And that, my friends, is IT!!! Here’s a sneak preview of one of the pictures I took of Elliott…I mean…”Manta Man”, wearing his brand new manta ray costume! I will share more images from our Lake Chelan photo shoot in my next post. Bye for now!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Alrighty, folks! For whatever reason (let’s blame covid19), this post has been months in the making. As you know, I love history, culture, and clothes. It’s a blast to put it all together and re-imagine our family in another time.

With our 1958 home, and our large family, it’s not too much of a stretch to put ourselves back into the 1960s. So, here we go!

As ever, I dressed the kids first, and was scrambling to get myself ready when Nana Karen, our amazing photographer, and Papa arrived. In the interim, the kids put on a show on the patio, and Karen took some cute candids.

What do you do while you wait for the rest of the family to get picture perfect?

You tango, of course!

Finally all in one place! Oh, Eliza. It really is too much to ask for five small children to all look at the camera at the same time. This is as good as it gets, as you will see from the bloopers I will share at the end of this post!

I don’t even mind. Their cute, little expressions are so authentic to their personalities. It can be stressful, in the moment, wondering if any of the pictures will be usable. However, it always works out, and it’s sure entertaining to go through the images and have a laugh.

Speaking of laughing…Eliza’s well of private amusement never runs dry.

I wish I knew her “inner monologue”.

My little koala bear.

Three sisters.

This was Annika’s best photo shoot, ever! She is usually NOT in the mood.

Maybe it’s the clothes! There’s just something about those bright, optimistic, ’60s colors.

Speaking of bright colors, can we just stop for a moment and acknowledge the beauty of the bright pink rhododendrons? *Makes a mental note to memorize the spelling of our state flower.*

Emma with the “Plant Pet” she made in my last post.

Two brothers. They look like little princes!

Except, maybe a bit too mischievous.

I should dress them like this, more often! Vintage children’s clothing is much shorter than contemporary fashions. Why have I been covering their cute little legs all this time?

The mister and me. These glasses “age” us a bit, but they really solidify the look!

Shout-out to my sister, Sarah, for Photo Shopping some of my, er, “wardrobe malfunctions”. Can’t take me anywhere!

I can hardly believe that we’ve nearly been married for ten years. Then, I look at our kids and think, “How has it only been TEN YEARS?”.

We squeezed in a couple more pictures in the front yard, since I love my May “purple garden”.

This flower bed is a sea of purple, with lupines, iris, and chives blossoms.

Well, here’s a final look at all of our outfits (except Jeff’s):

And, our last photo all together. I felt awkward standing there without a baby in my arms!

What would a Heminger Family Photo Shoot be without the bloopers? I spend just as much time putting these together as I do the “good” photos…So, enjoy!

“Huh?’

Annika is starting to give Eliza a run for her money in the goofy faces department…

…But Eliza is still the QUEEN.

Their powers combined are formidable.

Smile ’til it hurts!

Interpretive bench dance? “Here is your order, sir”? I don’t know what this is, but Annika is dishing up something, here!

In this picture, we find out what she was serving, and it’s pure sass.

This might be the bloopinest blooper of them all. (From this shoot, anyway!) We were only a few pictures in, and Eliza was all ready to “peace out”.

What happens after a photo shoot? Well, everyone is on a sugar high from all the M&M bribes, I mean *rewards* … Anyways…We live right in the heart of town where lots of Jeff’s extended family also resides. So, it was fun, but no surprise that Auntie Lynn happened to drive by and stop with Sophie. PUPPY!!!

I tried to get some cute candids of Annika, but they all look like this!

I couldn’t even get a picture of the boys, if that gives you an idea of how hyper everyone was.

“Okay, Mom. We’re done!”

For past posts on how I prepared for this shoot:

• 1960s Family Outfits and Set Prep

• 1960s Costume Prep

• April Showers Bring May Flowers – Part 1

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hello, costume friends! As promised, here are some collage images of all of our family costumes. (I will share the pictures from our 1960s Family Photo shoot very soon!)

Jeff’s outfit consisted of items already in his closet, including a tie that used to his grandfather’s and borrowed vintage glasses.

My ensemble included a vintage dress and shoes from the thrift store, a fabulous floral coat I got for free when a local theatre group disbanded, borrowed glasses, and a hat Jeff’s grandmother loaned me from her collection.

Emma wore a hand-me-down dress and a thrifted blouse and shoes. (She wore these white Mary Janes in The Sound of Music, last summer, when she played the role of Marta von Trapp.) A home-made headband, ribbon bow, and white knee socks finished her look.

All of Elliott’s costume pieces were thrifted, except for the socks and bow tie. He and Oliver wore their matching bow ties in my younger sister’s wedding, last year!

Eliza’s outfit pieces were sourced the same as Emma’s. We’ve gotten lots of use from these white knee socks! I originally purchased a set for Elliott to wear with his knee britches during the party scene in The Nutcracker. Since then, I’ve bought another set in a larger size, too. They work great and stay up!

All of Oliver’s articles of clothing were thrifted except for the shorts-overalls, the bow tie,  and the socks. The bright colors of the boys’ blazers convinced me to put the girls in similar colors. I was going to go a more pastel route, but changed my mind!

How cute is Annika’s vintage coat and dress set? I couldn’t believe my luck when I found it at Goodwill. (They tend to hoard all their vintage items until Halloween.)

We already owned the rest of her costume pieces.

As you can see, Annika’s dress and coat were size three, and she was about to turn three when we took these pictures. However, vintage sizes are often smaller than contemporary ones, and Annika is tall for her age! The dress was much too short.

Fortunately, the dress had a deep hem. I took a seam ripper to the stitches, exposing a raw edge. I serged it before giving the dress a new, very narrow hem with blind stitches.

Now that we’ve covered the outfits, I’ll show you how I prepared a cute photo location in our own yard! Those of you who know me know how much I love gardening! This other passion of mine will creep into some of my blog posts. I hope you will bear with me, because many of my projects are inspired by what is in bloom!

At the beginning of spring, I rounded up some thrifted animal planters and gave them to the kids. We planted bluebell bulbs from my mom into each planter.

They became their plant pets! The kids get a kick out of seeing them by our front door and watering them. (We don’t own any other kind of pets, and I hope to keep it that way for as long as possible!)

Once the bulb blooms faded, we decided to plant them in the garden and replace them with flowers that would last all summer.

The kids told me that they wanted marigolds, snapdragons, and violas. (They know their flowers!)

I took a lot of pictures of them planting. This is because this project was part of their gardening class that they were taking from me.

Elliott’s planter actually came from eBay, since an animal planter that he would like never surfaced during several months of thrifting excursions.

Eliza, of course, chose a red snapdragon, among her flowers!

Oliver was torn between wanting to be a part of this, while also objecting to how long it took. Life is hard when you are four years old and have ants in your pants.

Here are the finished plant pets! Well, I’d better start preparing my post with the promised, 1960s family photos. Thanks for sticking with me as I outlined all that went into the outfits and the photo location!

 

 

 

 

 

*This post contains affiliate links.*

Do you want to see my labyrinthine process for finding and altering stuff for my photo shoots? I hope you said “Yes!” because I’m about to show you!

So, in April Showers Bring May Flowers – Part 1 the kids were dressed like this. How did I find and prepare all of these elements? Well, it all came together at the thrift store. (Doesn’t it always?)

Okay, so I alluded to finding these vintage umbrellas in my last post. Here is Annika, giving the first one a test run in the thrift store. She was immediately as obsessed with it as I was! It had been left out in the open, casually propped against a piece of furniture. In a moment of inspiration, I thought to check the nearby bin of umbrellas, just in case there were more…And there WAS a second one!!! You can *just* see its pink, crook-handle peeking out of the top of the bin, on Annika’s left.

My first inspiration for doing a ’60s photo shoot with the kids was sparked when I saw that downtown mural. These umbrellas sealed the deal. Now I had a vision! When I brought the umbrellas home, I noticed that their clear, vinyl material was dusty and cloudy. It was time to give them some TLC.

I rounded up some gloves, a spray bottle with a 50/50 white distilled vinegar and water solution, and an old t-shirt rag. Then, I gave the umbrellas an initial rinse with the hose.

Next, I sprayed and wiped the umbrellas inside and out with the vinegar spray and t-shirt rag.

That clear vinyl began to glisten! I wasn’t able to remove the rusted bits at the crowns, but fortunately it’s not noticeable when the umbrellas are in use.

I set the umbrellas to dry…

…And here they are, (mostly) squeaky clean! Emma’s:

Eliza’s:

When I found Emma’s purse, I saw its potential. However, it was dingy and dirty. It looked like the kind of grime that would wash out, so I gave it a chance. Sure enough, a soak in OxiClean freshened it right up! *Pro-tip*: Use a large jug, like this one of white distilled vinegar, to weight soaking items that don’t want to stay submerged. Also, make sure you put buckets of soaking items up high for the safety of your kiddos and pets. My bucket was on the floor just for the photo. Then, I put it on top of the washing machine!

I’m one of those people who “loses” my phone three times a day…BUT I have a photographic memory for every scrap of trim and every color of every item that comes home with me. So, I knew I had the perfect, vintage daisy trim in my stash to make the perfect headbands for the girls’ outfits. I draped a bit over Eliza’s head for visualization.

Dollar Tree headbands are great to have around for these kinds of projects! (Of course, you have to buy more than one pack if you want to make matching ones of the same color). These are great, since they are covered with fabric and don’t dig in behind the ears. It was super easy to trim the daisy chains to length and glue them to the headbands. I always like to dab a bit of Fray Check on the ends of any cut trim to prevent raveling.

Okay, so do you want to hear some TMI? Probably not, but I’m going to tell you, anyway. I save the hair from our hair brushes. Now, hear me out: This practice has lengthy, historical precedent. I mean, if you consider that the creepy Victorians had the hair of their loved ones plaited into elaborate jewelry and mementos, how weird can it be? Anyway, lots of antiquated hairstyles required vast amounts of hair that were beyond the scope of many the average scalp. (I take solace knowing that ladies of long ago also suffered from having thin hair.) So, I wadded some of the girls’ collected hair strands into hair nets. Then, I placed these little pads under their top layers of hair to give them those iconic, 1960s bouffant poofs. And, voilà! Their hair got a boost with material that matched their actual hair colors if it showed through.

Now for the clothes! Emma and Eliza’s dresses were hand-me-downs, and they are actually the same size.

(Eliza, of course, got the red one!) I needed to take in Eliza’s dress at the sides and hem it so it would fit her the same as Emma’s. Fortunately, the dress’s simple, A-line design made this quite easy!

One of my favorite “cheats”, especially on a deep hem, is to tack it in just a few places, like at the side seams and the front and back. (Hemming it all the way around can cause puckers and additional bulk, due to the hem width being usually quite a bit wider at the bottom than farther up the garment.) Then, I press, press, press with the iron!

Here you can see how I took in the side seams. I gradually blend the stitches out to the side seam, like I do when making a dart. Sometimes, when I feel fancy, I tie my thread ends together before clipping them. This gives your dart stitches extra security at the tips.

Elliott’s vintage sports coat was such a fun thrift store find! It just needed to be shortened a bit in the sleeves. I folded them back the requisite lengths and gave them blind hems.I also moved the cuff buttons up. Buttons are easy to move, but can be a bit time-consuming if there are a lot of them!

Whew! Even though this project involved minimal sewing, it still took a few hours to do the cleaning, alterations, and ironing. It takes some effort to get all the costume pieces “picture perfect”. I’m telling you this so that you can go into a similar situation with your eyes WIDE open. (In other words, don’t be like me and kid yourself that you can get all of it done in half an hour AND somehow still take pictures the same day!)

Stay tuned for my next post, in which I will show you all the costume pieces put together into outfits. We did an additional photo shoot with the whole family, so I will do outlays of allllllllll the items we wore before sharing the family pictures. Talk to you soon, friends!