World Book Day Costumes Matilda and Miss Honey

These were last year’s costumes. It was only while discussing them with a friend that I remembered I hadn’t posted about them. They are of course Matilda and Miss Honey from Roald Dahl’s brilliant book.

These were easy peasy to make and based on the Quentin Blake illustrations below.

The Matilda costume was created from 2 primark blue t shirts one long sleeved one (cheaper) sleeveless vest that were both in the same material. They were both adult ladies ones, the long sleeved was a size 6 and the other the largest I could find, size 20 I think. First I took the long sleeve tee in to fit my daughter a bit better I did this by increasing the seams on the shoulders and down the sides the sleeves were narrow enough. This brought the neckline up a bit and made it into more of a boat neck – the excess fabric simply tucks inside. The skirt was made from the other bigger t shirt. I cut the top part off just under the armpits to create large tube and attached this to the adapted long sleeve tee, with a half shearing elastic stitch that I’ve used for t shirt dresses before. (Hand wind your bobbin with a colour matched elastic, with normal cotton thread in the needle sew as usual to self gather and maintain t shirt stretch). The other bits of this outfit are white plimsoles from primark and a faux/clip in fringe bought from eBay. The book prop is a cereal box with a piece of pipe lagging stretched over one side and hot glued in place covered in paper and painted.

Miss Honey’s was even easier! Bought a long sleeve orange t shirt from eBay and made the skirt from a  large men’s grey t shirt from the charity shop. I cut the t-shirt from arm pit to arm pit, keeping the bottom hem and side seams, I turned over the top of this large tube of fabric and hemmed it, and ran a length of elastic through this. Miss honey scarf is a silver grey napkin from the charity shop, and her glasses are pound land reading glasses with the lenses popped out.

Hope your World Book day outfits are as simple as this to make?

 

Red Fish/Poisson Rouge

I promised to do a post on red fish before, so here it is -sorry about the delay! A wonderful friend -who is a primary school teacher put me onto this site, it is genius. My 3 and 1/2 year old can navigate her way around this site all on her own has taught her basic computer skills, quite detailed mouse control/motor skills/hand and eye coordination –  and countless other stuff that she is just picking up. When we visited the Tate modern she knew the Jackson Pollock work from Red Fish’s gallery page. When she broke her collar bone and we had to take her for an x-ray she knew exactly what it was based on her interactions with ‘x’ for x-ray on the English alphabet page! – They have the alphabet in English, Spanish, Greek, American, and French and there are vocabulary lessons in Greek, American, French, English and Chinese! As well as numbers, maths, stories, songs and games, it seems to be completely endless, and best of all Martha loves it and it’s free!

Bookmark immediately http://www.poissonrouge.com