Hey all! I did another silly thing and decided to compete again in Crafting Con this time for Mario month.
My look is the Tanooki Mario from Super Mario 3. As a teen I was really into playing Mario on my Nintendo. I was pretty good and usually played the Princess in the games where she was playable but Mario was my second favourite to play. (Luigi and his flutter kicking feet in Super Mario 2 were SO annoying!)
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Anywho, I had already made my nephew some Mario overalls for this past Halloween and well, I had a hard time trying to figure out how to make Mario overalls not look like Mario overalls but still look like Mario overalls. You know? Since the whole purpose of Crafting Con is to make a look inspired by some show/character that doesn’t scream costume but still hints at the character or show. Cuz I mean they’re overalls. Take off the red shirt and you’ve got some regular old overalls.

Ha. So I went with the Tanooki Mario.
My pics aren’t great, our house is fairly dark during the day, so I have to up the ISO, open up the f-stop and still end up needing a slow shutter speed (I pretty much refuse to use my flash, lol) and well -30 Celsius outdoors there’s no way she’s going outside for pics without her snowsuit on! (One day I will get a new lens for my camera and I’ll be able to take better indoor pics! One day!) And Miss V refused to keep the hood up. Like seriously, this kid loves hoods and hats normally, but of course the one time (well, three times for three different photo sessions I tried) I wanted to take pictures with a hood up she absolutely refused. And then I took the hoodie off her for her nap (the hood is big and didn’t seem safe for sleeping in), and she ran off with it and I haven’t been able to find it yet. So I couldn’t get a non-blurry picture of the hoodie lying flat so the ears were noticeable. Ha! Seriously, I’m thinking of not bothering doing any blogging anymore between November and April if I can’t get outdoor pictures with her. 😛
The two patterns I used for this look are the Bimaa from Loubee Clothing and the soon-to-be-released Dressage Leggings from Jennuine Design*. I modified the hoodie slightly to add forward facing raccoon ears. The designer does have a tutorial on her blog for adding ears but they weren’t the ears I wanted so I made my own changes. I used striped fabric on the leggings to emulate the striped tail on the Tanooki suit. I think she looks cute in the outfit, I don’t think it screams Mario though but I’m ok with that. The two pieces would also look good separate and that makes me happiest. I had also planned on making a bib overalls style dress but my sewing machine nearly died so I decided to cut one item out of my to-do list and spread the dying machine love to another project instead 😛 (I took it apart and cleaned out the insides but it still makes loud dying noises. I don’t think it’s made for daily use so I’m saving up to buy a new one and cutting back on the sewing a little until then.) Anyway, both patterns are pretty good, the leggings are not released yet so I won’t go into more detail on them for now. I’ll probably do a proper review of the Bimaa later but I will say that I did upsize it by one size and still found it to be fairly fitted through the chest on Miss V.
So, head on over to Crafting Con and check out more pics of my look. I’m not expecting to win or anything and there’s no voting needed on your part, but the emotional support as I wallow in the self-pity due to my blurry pics would be nice.
~Ula