Fancy Dress - Sylvanian Bear Sister/Brother in a Cat Outfit

 You can buy super cute Sylvanians in fancy dress...

There is something very strange and very appealing about Sylvanian cats dressed up as a chick and a rabbit...

However, Farrah wants a cat fancy dress outfit so Nana has spent quite a bit of time working out how to do this....





And voilà! We have a - slightly scary*? - cat outfit worn by a bear...


* yes scary - my daughter (grand-daughters' mummy) says the cat looks like a serial killer lol

The cat face mask is stitched onto a hood which can be worn up or down

I could not work out how to make a kind of hooded romper suit all in one,so it has ended up as a hood, which can be worn fastened at the back as shown or at the front as a kind of scarf.

It is worn over a jacket which was cut all in one including the sleeves,

then there are little pull on elasticated waist trousers with an added tail.

I will probably try again to make an all in one now I have had a go! I have found some baby all in one patterns so may try to scale those down.
I used fabric glue for the felt applique and embroidery silk for the features.

TECHNIQUE I USED 

I used this fabulous pattern from http://www.246.ne.jp/~jr1vvc/sylvanian.html and adapted it for a cat suit, re-drawing the sleeves to make them wider and shorter.

The cat suit is for a sister/brother so it was very small to work with .

The all in one sleeves took several goes as they were very tight at first - so I might go back to separate sleeves next time,  or try a very wide all in one sleeve - I widened it several times on the pattern  but may try flaring them out more...

Sewing this outfit  was not helped as the fabric was quite bad for fraying (and I had not used fray check as I did not find this out until it was too late :(). Also it was cut on the bias so I thought there would be enough give in the fabric... 

I tried a tip I found on a doll dress making site that suggests using kitchen roll to cut out templates and fit them on to the figures before cutting out the material - this was great except the kitchen roll was fray proof and the fabric wasn't-  still I will know next time...:) 

The fraying was also a problem for the cuffs as I just could not stitch inside the hems so they are blanket stitched a bit scruffily... however I am living and learning!

Party Balloons by Petr Kratochvil   

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