Another glorious Super Duper park day

Hurray the Super Duper

Always a frame work for lesson planning or life-learning or as the case was most recently was a "teachable moment"or is presented by the monthly Super Dupers, basically a home school show and tell that precedes one of our park days.

Skye wanted to be a gypsy. Well there's a lot there. We went to the library got some books on gypsies, realized very early on that Skye's outfit would be gypsy-inspired as their "traditional" dress was rather glum and dour. We dispelled a couple of the bigger misconceptions and myths in regards to gypsies, but have yet to really jump into the "study" of gypsies as I had imagined.

We did however at the last moment succeed in coming up with an idea of a costume. We were able to use scraps of fabric that we had acquired from a friend at one of the studios drapery department. So the costume was environmentally friendlier because we were using fabric that was otherwise on the way to a landfill.

Materials in hand we started pattern-making(which Skye ended up not using) and cutting and pinning and sewing up the skirt for her outfit.

The machine we have is an industrial machine and quite sturdy and efficient, a real task horse and fast as the dickens and hard to control at least for amateurs like Skye and myself. Add to that our rushedness because of the looming parade, all of a week and a couple days before Halloween and the "teachable" moments became about planning, taking on unrealistic goals and learning when to "cut bait" as it were.

After cleaning up the garage enough so that we could use it, and finishing up all the other bits and pieces that make up life I took the skirt pieces which Skye had already pinned together done much of the sewing and took over so she could get to bed before too late, which at our house is pushing 11 o'clock. She's a night owl and one of the wonderful things about home schooling is being able to allow for her natural sleep rhythms. So I was off to sewing into the smaller hours of the night or morn, depending on one's perspective.

Skye was fine with the first version of her Skirt. I however thought that it was too full and decided to remove a panel or two, and then I thought if the hem were weighted say by some beading it would fall better and then to hide the bunchiness of the drawstring we could add a waist band. I decided this the morning of the 11 am costume parade.

Did I mention part of the great fun of the Super Duper is the potluck that follows? Yes we would be cooking up our proscuto wraped figs with melted manchego center festivally displayed on these black driftwood trees that suited the halloween theme.

So at 9:30 I was sewing back Skye's skirt after tearing out some panels, redoing the drawband that I had torn out to add the waistband which I decided was too complicated for the time being, and putting away all the lovely beading I had dug out, all the while hoping that Skye could manage to make the figs on her own.



Skye in her gypsy outfit. Very simple and scaled down, embellishments may or may not follow.
Had I not attempted to re-do things and "fix" it, it would have been a doable and simple project.






This is an older version of the "fig tree" . Skye was successful in her cooking exploits and together we hung the fruit and made it to park day just in time, in spite of LA's mean traffic.

We were there the better part of the day, had wonderful food and conversation and I am realizing the time right now and will finish off this post to avoid a less than nice 'teachable" moment.