Carnival costume: Pippi Longstocking

Yesterday, fat Tuesday, the kids were supposed to go to school in costumes to celebrate the carnival together. This year I didn't want to buy some fancy costume paying a lot of money just to put in the storage room after using it only once. I decided to dress my daughter as Pippi Longstocking and checked all the clothes she had to see if we had everything we needed. We had colorful stockings, a skirt and a matching T-shirt. The only thing that was missing was a sleeveless dress to wear over. So I set down to work. I found some old linen curtain that we had that could do the work. I went through all the sewing magazines I had, but didn't find a model of a sleeveless dress. I transformed a long casual dress paper model instead. I completed it with a huge frontal pocket and some patches here and there, using only left-over tissues I had at home. I do enjoy recycling ;-) Look at the result of an afternoon's sewing project:

And this is how my daughter was all dressed-up and her freckles made darker with a face-coloring pencil :-)

She (and me) got a lot of compliments yesterday. People were especially wondering how I made her hair stand like this. Well, here is the trick:

A piece of wire/cable that is hard enough to keep the shape that you give it. I put it over the head of my daughter, covered the middle part with her hair and braided her hair all around it. Then cut the part that was sticking out at the end of the braids. It was unseen, totally covered with her hair, which made everybody think "how did she do that??" ;-)