Look What Escaped the Zoo! Project Run & Play Week 1 Challenge

The theme for the first week of Project Run & Play is “Put Me in the Zoo.”  They described this challenge as, “Take inspiration from your favorite (or your child’s favorite animal) and design and construct an outfit.  Remember to make it “inspired by” and not a literal costume.”  So I began by asking Annie what was her favorite animal at the zoo.  She didn’t even take a second to think about it and cried, “Flamingo!”  I know that it’s the flamingo because it’s the only PINK animal at the zoo, and pink is her favorite color.  So with that in mind I started thinking.  Now almost all my inspiration for this zoo outfit came from Frances Suzanne.  They have some reverse appliqué on their Pinterest board and I’ve been wanting to try it for a while.  Also, they host Flip This Pattern, and for the month of April, the pattern to be flipped is Heidi & Finn’s color block dress.  Since Challenge Create: Adult Edition will be running during the month of April, we decided to get a little jump start.  But like the Spring Break challenge, I wasn’t ready to dive right in, so enter David’s zoo outfit!  I asked David what was his favorite animal at the zoo, and he too knew right what he liked, “Zebra!”  I started by downloading the free toddler t-shirt pattern from Melly Sews.

 Then I gathered a zebra silhouette, some zebra striped fabric, black knit fabric, and an old t-shirt of Daddy’s.  Put them together and you get…

There were only two ways that I modified this pattern.  I added a hood, and made the neckline larger.

Well, truth be told, first I added the hood wrong, and sewed the neck the exact size on the pattern.  Then it wouldn’t fit over his (very large) head, so I modified the neck when I took apart the top of the shirt to fix the hood.  I would have given up and thrown the whole thing in the mending (read: never to be touched again!) pile, but David had already seen it and was talking about wearing it and asking me if it was ready yet!

But I’m so glad I took time to fix the shirt for him because he looks so cute in it!  

I lined the underside of the front with Daddy’s old white t-shirt to encase the zebra print fabric because it was a heavier, scratchier home decorating type fabric, and I didn’t want it to itch David.  

I also lined the inside of the hood with Daddy’s white t-shirt to keep up the black and white theme.  

And I stitched around the reverse appliqué zebra again with white thread both to stabilize the fabric underneath and keep up that black and white theme!

For Annie’s flamingo zoo outfit, I started with the Heidi & Finn color block dress, but felt free to “flip” it.  Although this PDF pattern is so cute, we may just make it again exactly as printed!

I gathered a flamingo silhouette, some pink fabric, some contrasting fabric, and an old skirt of Annie’s that was not wearable as it was.  And a pink feather boa and Allegra’s embroidery skills!  Put all those together and you get…

I made the top and middle sections of the color block dress pretty much with no flip, but added the flutter sleeves from the Josephine blouse.  For the bottom block, we used the bottom tiers of Annie’s skirt, after we fixed a few holes!  

I found some flamingo patterned fabric in my stash, but ended up not using it because the print was too big for the top tier and the reverse appliqué, where I intended to use it.  

Since this pattern is fully lined, it was very easy to add some reverse appliqué between the two layers before sewing them together.  I love how the floral accent from the top color block section is echoed behind the flamingo.  Allegra embroidered the flamingo’s legs, beak and eye.  

And even though pink is not MY favorite color, I think Annie is pretty pleased with how this turned out!

Since I am only a few weeks away from giving birth, and the zoo with zebras and flamingos is a couple of hours away, we opted for letting these animals out of the zoo at a park instead of going to the real zoo!  

I really don’t think they minded their afternoon outing!

And I love how the reverse appliqué ties their outfits together without being too matchy-matchy!

For being such good models of their zoo outfits and to thank Allegra for her awesome photography skills, we stopped by an ice cream shop on the way home!

Annie was all set on the (pink) bubblegum ice cream, but changed her mind at the last minute to chocolate!  Hard decision!

David had to get whatever Annie did, including the gummy bear on top!  A yummy reward for a job well done!

Now go over to Project Run & Play to see all the great zoo outfits!

Make it beautiful,

Audrey

We will also be linking this post up to Frances Suzanne’s Flip This Pattern later in April!