Mummy-ness: party bags and twirly fairy dresses

This is a post I feel I already wrote, but can't find in the published list.  Am clearly not entirely with it...

So the young lady of the house turned five on 12th May.  She is now especially big and important and grown-up.  Someone at another birthday party asked their son to move "out of the little girl's way" the other day, and she turned to him and solemnly informed him that "actually, I am five years old".  Apparently a little girl no more :)

I, on the other hand, consider five to be the perfect little girl age.  They are worldly enough to know what is special effort (hand making stuff for them for example - hurrah!) and innocent enough not to think it's daggy or to have to not be excited by anything.  For her party I organised a fairy to come to our house.  Happily we have a biggish house and ten kids (including her and her brother) was considered sufficient (more than fourteen apparently incurs the need for an additional fairy...!).  I dug out the twirly fairy type dress I was going to make her ages ago and got to work:

Mission Accomplished!

I am so ridiculously pleased with this dress.  She had a store bought thing my sister sent her which was similar (t-shirt top, tiered skirt not circle) which she loved.  When she grew out of it I set about making a similar one with the three layer circle skirt for supreme twirling action (2 layers chiffon and one layer satin).  I let myself get all worked up and sidetracked by someone asking me how I was going to attach the skirt (with non-stretchy cotton) to the (stretchy) t-shirt.  I left this awesomeness in the bag for literally months :(

Silly mummy...

Then I sucked it up and decided to finish it for the party:

• I sewed the three circle skirt layers together with a gathering stitch.  
• I marked where they should attached to the dress. 
• I marked two sides and pinned to the hems of the t-shirt
• I marked the middle front and back on both pieces and pinned there
• I kind of gathered the remainder until the skirt was pinned to the t-shirt while the t-shirt was stretched enough to get it on and off. 
• I sewed them on (right sides together) with a medium-long zig zag stitch.
• I flipped it over to see if it was awful and...it was brilliant!

After trying it on her, I overlocked / serged the edges of the three skirts (mmm fun times...) and then tried it on again.  Looked great!  She loved it!  She suggested a butterfly on the front of the t-shirt...thanks kid!  I made it up out of a single layer of the chiffon (edges overlocked) which was semi gathered in the middle to make them wing-y (it's totally a word) and then secured to t-shirt with a purple bias binding I had with a ribbon over the top.  I think I might have added wool antennae too.

She deemed the butterfly to be good (phew!).  I had the super agonising moment where I asked her if she wanted to wear this or one of her other (bought) fairy dresses for her party...she chose this!  I was stoked :)

The rest of the party was great.  I made some simple party bags out of stash fabrics:

They look so pretty all together :)

The fairy painted faces:

Birthday girl first...

Her brother did actually like the spider - contrary to appearances!

She was very happy with all the butterfly fairy-ness

Daddy made a toadstool cake (note the dolly varden tin making itself useful...)

And there was some serious fairy story-telling.

 The whole party was lovely - I got to do the bits I really wanted to do (sewing things, spending time with her at her party and craft with the kids) and to hand off the bits I was less confident tackling (cake - to my husband, face painting and dressing up - to the fairy).

And at the end of it all - she was tired and happy and still twirling! And so beautiful.