Well, the only reason I had to keep this project secret on here was because Ash reads this journal, so she would have seen it all!
Earlier this year, the girls all decided they wanted Hogwarts robes for Dragoncon next year. The plan was that I would make them next year. Well then I thought, why not make them for their Christmas presents?
The actual MAKING was fairly easy, I made them all in about 2 weeks, working off and on. The problem was finding enough black fabric! I started out with one kind of black fabric that I loved, I thought I had gotten enough for 3 robes at one store, and was planning on scouring the rest of the cities’ stores for more. Well it was not as wide as I thought (it wasn’t even 45in wide. Isn’t that weird? It was more like 35, which really screwed me up), so I only had enough for 1! I had a little leftover, and managed to buyout the last of it at one of the other stores to finish up a second. I had to switch to something else for the last two robes, though, which was a pain in the butt. Oh well.
I used the Simplicity robe pattern a lot of people seem to use, just adjusted to make the back and front pieces all one piece, instead of having that seam across the chest. I really wish I had been able to make the sleeves wider, but the limitations of how much fabric I had – especially at the beginning with the first fabric – kept me from doing that.
Here they are all packed up. Chase’s contribution was to paint the boxes, and he got the ribbons that matched the house colour each girl got.
(They also got luggage tags, since 3 out of 4 of them are traveling in the next couple of months)
And then here’s all the robes, after ironing and before packing –
Then, they went over real well, I was happy š Here’s all the girls in the robes – ignore the fact they’re pretty wrinkled from being folded inside that little hatbox.
So, that was 2007 š Now, I’m going to get cracking on Bespin Leia! š