Adventure in the Bush

I can’t believe I actually got this done!! Talk about waiting till the very last moment! Well, almost. It’s my take on the theme “Adventure” for June’s Project Run and Play sew along. Somehow I have ended up with a whole lot of things due to be completed right around the same time. This particular outfit was not a must, but it sure was high on my “want to finish” list. I am so excited about this one. And I actually did a for real happy dance today when this girlie got dressed to go take pictures. I’ve never done a happy dance before!

Ok, so I saw the theme was Adventure and my first thought was…….(blank). Then all I could think about was black bears. “You live in the Boreal Forest!!” is something I read every once in awhile on my town’s News and Alerts FB page. This occurs when people start getting worked up about bear sightings. I doubt it’s supposed to calm the nervous ones. I usually sense an eye roll with that statement.  Or perhaps it’s more to remind us all of where we live and it’s kinda expected to get some bears in town once in awhile.

Whether we should expect it or not, it’s always an adventure when we hit bear season and every once in awhile we get one or two bears that keep coming into town. “Heads up! Bear spotted on Michener extension!” “Bear now walking down the people path behind Kelsey Bay!” “Bear up in the tree behind my house!” Or the one summer when I was looking out my living room window one day after supper and the RCMP were running through my yard trying to chase the bear out of the area. They weren’t overly successful because later that night Erick was watching TV and heard something at the door. He went to go see what it was and the dang bear was RIGHT by the door rummaging through our garbage bin!! He took a video, of course (Erick, not the bear), but it was pretty dark out.

I think my all time favourite bear story was the night the guys had a baseball game and us girls decided to go to Trish’s to play board games. (We are total board game nerds. Not Monopoly, no. The ones they call Euro board games.) You don’t know Trish? You can meet her here. Anyway, the kids were all over at the ball diamond down the street with the guys. At one point one of the boys came home to get something. He didn’t really need our attention so we let him do his thing and played our game. He rummaged around at the bottom of the stairs just beside the dining room where we were and went on his way. A short bit later Erick comes in the door calling us sounding a bit flustered. Long story short, that rummaging we heard??? It was a bear in the house. Once the kids got what they wanted, they took off and left the door open. Thankfully, we laugh a lot when we play games and visit so I’m pretty sure that annoyed the bear enough not to venture further than the doorway. And thankfully, the kids were all away at that time.

Enough bear stories. What did I use for patterns?

I’ll start with the pants. These are the Wild and Free Lounge Pants by Coffee and Thread. I bought this pattern a few months ago now and at the time of considering the purchase I wasn’t sure if I would make them, but my girls saw me perusing the patterns and loved them. After that it was an issue of too many other things on my plate and not the right fabric. But when you’ve got bears on the brain, come on!! What could be more perfect!?

As I’m typing this I JUST realized that the terry fabric I used for these is actually part of my PR&P Signature week link up winnings! Huh! I had received a gift certificate from Cali Fabrics and thought I’d try some of this.

For these pants I wanted them to be baggy so I sized up. Imagine my relief when I saw how they still fit quite snug! Thank goodness I sized up. For the contrast fabric, I turned the terry inside out. So the lighter section is the reverse. It was a handy trick that meant I had something that would match for sure! The black for the face and ears is scraps from some faux stretch leather. I didn’t have the fabric paint that the pattern calls for so I did these as appliqués. Those ears were very tricky to get nice and round. I didn’t actually succeed, but it doesn’t take away from how cute these are. And I have to say that I sure do love the waistband on these pants! Instead of the typical waistband casing, the elastic is sewn to the top of the pants, turned down and topstitched. No shifty, twisty elastics!!

 

Moving on to the sweater. I don’t know if I can really say that this is my own pattern. My oldest has a sweater from Joe Fresh that is like this. I love the cropped bagginess. So I spent some time figuring it out and drawing up a pattern to make another with one important change. Ears!

The original just had vertical seam lines down the hood from front to back, but I didn’t want the ears to go sideways. So I cut a seam that went around from side to side and stuck those ears in there! There was some discussion in the house about whether or not they look like mouse ears. For this purpose they are NOT! Maybe another day they can be mouse ears.

If all bears were this cute I’d pinch their cheeks and take them home with me!

I wish I looked this cool in lounge pants and cropped sweaters!! I feel it slightly unfair that when I birth a small human that she then gets to rock the clothes I want to rock and has a permanent tan that I have to work for.

When I said “Pretend you just spotted a bear and you’re all surprised” we could not quite get the face of fear. More like she’s making fun of it. We tried.

Of all the pictures we took this is pretty much the most you get to see of the third piece I made for this outfit. It’s the shirt peeking out. I didn’t take the sweater off for pics of it. Probably should have. What I can tell you about it, is that I used my own tutorial found here and hacked it even more to make a tank top that is more muscle shirt. It has the fun tulip hem in the back and will be a great layering  top or summer fun shirt.

I’ll leave you with more pics including a little scene the girls wanted to enact. The bear is attacking the girl. HAHA

 

 

 

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