Finished Tree

Got the tree yesterday, and here it is all put together. The light plugs into the top of the blue twinkle lights, and it has its own switch.

Colin Baker gives a little wave, there, next to Amy Pond, Ood Sigma and Captain Jack.


My oldest felt that having the people made it look too much like a paper-doll tree, so in the end we rehung all the doctors and companions at the bottom, which has the added benefit of amusing the cat.

Ornaments!

 

Keeping in mind that this is a quickie fun project, not one for the ages, here are the ornaments for our Doctor Who Christmas tree. We will have normal ornaments, too, of course, although the thought is to restrict them to blue/white/silver, and blue or white lights.

I don't own these images, they're just off the web. They retain their original copyright.

You'll need:
files printed back-to back in color on card stock
small scissors
hole punch
razor knife/xacto knife
glue stick or contact cement
pin

Print files back-to-back on card stock.
I have done my best to align the back & front on the file. But as you can see from mine, the mysteries of different printers often offset them. Call it a feature, or a white drop shadow, and cut them out using a light to figure out where the edges are.

Be sure to leave white space above the heads so you can put a hole in for string. The top photo is an example, but I didn't put the cutting lines on the files, because of the printer shifting effect.

For the Fezzes, Bow Ties & Police Box signs, just cut them out and put a hole wherever you like. Same with the River Song Blue books.

The tardis(es) are a little different. They're smaller than their original size (you can find full-page versions on the interwebs). I just made them more ornament-sized.

Cut them out and assemble
I used contact cement to make tricky parts stick, and I used a pin to get the teensy light to go in the slots at the top.
I'm intending to use a sewing needle and thread to make a loop to hang them up. You can also perch them on the branches. Rubik's cube gives you an idea of scale.

Doctors & Companions

River Song's Blue Book

Bow Ties, Fezzes & Police Box Signs

Tardis: 3 styles

Tardis Light

As promised, here is the Doctor Who Tardis tree topper.

I don't know why I'm wired this way, but I refuse to do crafts that can't handle the use they're made for. And I have despised most of our traditional tree toppers (except the angel I made myself out of a doll that got water damaged) because that springy thing at the bottom never, ever works on a tree. I think they're meant for threading on a fake tree by twisting the top wire branch. Oh, and I also hate fake trees.

So here I find myself making a tree topper, and I don't want it to sag, flop, or in any other way make my Christmas any more work than it already is. I just want it to attach and glow brightly, and because it's the Tardis light, humorously.

DISCLAIMER: this craft uses lights. I am not an electrician. Everybody repeat that after me: not an electrician. What I know I learned at my intrepid father's knee. Make this thing at your own risk, and only if you're comfortable with the risk.

Here's what you'll need:

• Plastic jar — we always get a little four foot tree and put it up on a table (just like Queen Victoria), so the jar I used was the 15 oz Hellmann's mayonnaise, because we had just finished it, but you can use a bigger one. The blue is only ok, although various Tardises had different variations of blue, and it'll have to do. In retrospect, though, I should've swapped the lid for the darker Miracle Whip one we have.
• Drill & drill bits
• Candelabra socket base — I got mine at Home Depot, but I couldn't find it online. You can get it at Amazon here.
• Pliers and snips
• Small screwdriver
• Replacement plug — this thing is awesome (again, got it at HD, but can't find it online. Here it is at Amazon.)
• Longest thinnest bolt you can get — I used a carriage bolt, which felt stupid, but worked ok. 
• 2 Nuts to fit the bolt
• 2 washers to fit the bolt
• Candelabra bulb
• Teensy zip ties
• 2 big hair claw clips — these will hold the light to the tree securely.

The first attempt, I used a 50 bulb christmas tree string I found for $1.49 and this is what it looked like:

Fail, but I remade it better the second time with a candelabra socket.


Start with the lid. Drill from the inside out. I did it the opposite way, but it's much neater from inside out. Drill four holes. I started with two, but needed four on the fly, but I've helpfully photoshopped them in for you here.

Get the long bolt, nuts & washers.

Push the bolt and washer through from the inside of the lid in the hole that's a little apart from the others on the edge. Sorry for the weird mysterious red line. Ignore it.

Clamp the hair clips onto the bolt and thread the zip ties through. Pinch the clips and pull hard to secure them, being careful not to bend the little metal rod inside the clips. Keep at it until the clamps can't move up and down. They can rotate, though, but don't worry about that.

And now it looks like this:

Now for the light. I should've taken a photo, but I'm sure you can figure this out--cut the plug off the cord as straight across as you can. Remember, I'm not responsible, and not giving you electrical advice, just describing what I did.

Using the little screwdriver, unscrew the switch on the light cord. I personally find it helpful to rub the switch casing with a pencil to show which side had the cut cord, so I can put it together faster later.

Take the cord out and thread it through the center hole of the lid. Go slowly and be super careful because of that cut wire that went into the switch. Now sew the cord up the middle hole and out the third hole at the edge. This will stabilize the light, although you're free to gorilla glue or putty it if you prefer.

Reassemble the switch on the cord, and assemble the replacement plug, following the directions.

Twist in the bulb, and you're done. I'd show you on a tree, but I haven't gotten one yet. I did tag it, though, and tested the light on it at the tree farm. It fixes on beautifully and doesn't sag or droop, because it's so lightweight. I might replace the springy thing on my normal star with the bolt & hair clamp setup.

I'm good with this, but if you want more accuracy, you can add the little upright bars on the sides and put a cap on it. Because it absolutely must be very light (or end up droopy), the most I'd do is a very lightweight felt or foam. 

I first got hooked on Doctor Who when I was at college in the 1980s. A bunch of us would grab snacks and hang out in the common room at my friend Marianne's dorm and watch weird old British tv on PBS, and this was one of the favorites. We binge-watched, to the extent that was possible, being dependant on the PBS schedule, but for some reason, for some period of time, our local station broadcast a lot of Doctor Who. Once, I gave money and got a lovely little enameled Tardis pin, which I called my nerd-o-meter. If people recognized what it was, I said "ding ding ding," but most people thought it was just a nice bit of Anglophilia, and that was good, too.

I was sure the reboot a few years ago by BBC would be a hatchet job. I mean, the original was hardly high-quality drama. One of the joys of the old one was to recognize reused costumes (dancing eyeball-alien-thing?), identify pieces of set wobbling dangerously, and shout out when the editors reused a shot of the Doctor running down a hall and by reusing the same piece of film, flipped, so that he looked like he was running down a much longer corridor. Silly fun.

I didn't even bother watching the new version until I saw something I can't remember with David Tennant (probably an episode of QI, a terrific game show you should watch), and reconsidered, then binge-watched his, then watched all the Eccleston episodes. Now hooked, I am always on the edge for new episodes, and tell everybody about it like a Victorian missionary. Blessed be the Brits who upload to YouTube, for they have my eternal gratitude, and until recently, beat the local broadcast by about a year.

All of this is a preamble to the fact that we're all fans of the good Doctor here, and it's the 50th Anniversary, and it's Bridget's turn to choose the tree decoration colors this year, and she chose blue, silver and white for a Doctor Who tree.

We're pretty unlikely to do this more than once, so I don't want to invest much in the way of money, and we're not going to be cherishing precious ornaments, so they need to be quick-and-fab. However, Bridget has always wanted the Tardis door for her room, so I am making a police-box light for the top of the tree with the thought that it will be repurposed for her at a later point.

Doctor Who Tree Topper Tutorial

Merida Dress, Halloween 2013

My daughter's friend looks just like Merida from Disney's Brave, and this year she decided to go out as the Scottish princess for Halloween. I'd like to acknowledge a huge debt to Angela Clayton for her tutorial. I always search the web to see if anyone's already invented the wheel, then make my own choices while making the project. Here's the costume I made, and how I modified it.

First, because this is a costume, I used costume quality crushed velvet panné from Joann's fabric. If it were to have a lot of use, I would get something a bit sturdier. I chose the dark blue because honestly, even though a lot of versions are dark green, the movie looked dark blue.

I measured our Merida with the assistance of my fantastic pattern-drafting daughter, Susannah. We did a complete dress measure of her:

wrist (around)	bust around	waist around
shoulder to wrist	underbust around	hips around
elbow to wrist	chest around	waist to hip
shoulder to shoulder	neck around	waist to ankle
back neckbone to hip	upper arm around	collarbone to hips
back neckbone to waist	collar bone to waist	armpit to hips

I didn't bother with leg measurements, because, you know, it's a dress. While it's not for everyone, because I knew I'd have to divide a lot of things into fourths, I used metric.

Next I cut up an old sheet to make a "muslin" or trial run. I often just go to Salvation Army and get a 99¢ sheet, though this time I happened to have one. Pros: you adjust the fitting. Cons: the actual material I was using was stretch, but I figured it was a good way to start.

So using the measurements, I worked off a fold with a sharpie and a long straight-edge. Neckbone to hip, neckbone to waist, waist up to collarbone, hips up to armpit. Waist to floor (plus a bunch, because that can be dealt with later). Then from the fold, I worked out: at the armpit level: bust divided by 4. At the waist level: waist divided by 4. At the hip level: hip divided by four. Then I kind of winged it on the shape of the neck and armpit using a shirt. I gave everything about a half inch seam allowance and sewed it. I only used a muslin for the main body, because the sleeves are actually kind of clever and different. I also cut godets that measured from hip to floor. I only cut two, because I was running out of sheet.

This has never happened before, but when I tried it on our Merida, it was perfect in all important respects. I did give her armpits a little more room.

Because it fit so well, I was kind of wistful at having to rip it apart to be the pattern for the costume, but oh well.

I assembled the dress with the proper amount of godets (four). The little white "v" at the front is just an appliqué, which makes life a lot easier. I had a huge amount of fun with my new serger making ruffles. Unfortunately, ruffling takes away the stretch of the material, but tons of fun anyway. To make the ruffles, I sewed the white lycra into a tube first, then ran it through the ruffle settings on the serger. I also cut a strip of the panné to bind the collar and sleeve edges. This was a tactical error on the sleeve edges. I should've made the sleeves like you normally do, then appliquéd the binding. I'll know for next time. The unintended consequence of the beautiful ruffles is that it tended to pull the collar binding with it and turn the top of the dress inside out, so I made a decision I had been flirting with and was glad I did: I found a lightweight long-sleeved white shirt at Salvation Army for $1. It was delicately waffle-weaved, which would help keep Merida warm at night in October in the Northeast, and would line the dress, tame the ruffle, and ultimately, help with the sleeves.

With the shirt basted in, we did another fitting. I had to trim the collar of the shirt, then hand sewed it into the collar so it didn't show, but covered the base of the ruffles.

Now the sleeves. Because the panné is thin and stretchy, for the little straps that appear to attach the sleeve to the shoulder of the dress, and the forearm to the upper arm, I sewed half-inch-wide tubes, then ran binding through the tube and sewed down the center. I did it on the regular sewing machine with a twin needle, because I have four for some reason, and like the way the stitch comes out. Then I cut the tube into 8 three-inch pieces. Because I had short pieces of panné to work with, I had to do a second tube, and realized I had run out of binding. I ran a shoelace through the second tube. Then I kept the two sets of 8 separate so that I could use them symmetrically: the binding version at the shoulder, the shoelace version at the elbow. That's probably overkill, but seemed orderly.

I measured out the sleeves using the arm measurements and a general top-of-the-sleevy shape. I did a quick pinning and it all looked good. Then I did what I understood from Angela's website above and cut two inches off the top of the sleeve, and the center of the sleeve. This is because instead of trying to replicate the medieval snazzy dress where there would be an underdress with pouffy sleeves and a kirtle on top with two-part sleeves attached with straps where you'd pinch the pouffy underdress sleeves to come through at the shoulder and elbow, all we need is for this dress to look like that. I'd done this dodge before with a Queen Susan dress from The Chronicles of Narnia. If I can find the photos, I'll post that at some point.

I didn't bother shaping the white sleeve inset material, I just used rectangles. I ruffled some white lycra (not in a tube this time).

Another unintended consequence: I wanted to finish and sew the sleeves at the same time, but when you use the cutter on previously ruffled fabric, the ruffling falls apart. I knew that already, because I only have to make the same mistake three or four times before learning something, so I ran the ruffled white through the normal sewing machine on baste to hold onto the ruffles. Even with this extra step, the ruffling through the server is so incredibly fast that the whole process was maybe five minutes for each piece (two for each sleeve) versus the ordinary long stitch > pull the thread to ruffle > normal way. Then I assembled the sleeves and basted them onto the dress. I didn't attach the little straps.

This fitting did not go as well. The sleeves were ridiculously short, with the elbow bend happening a couple inches up the upper arm. Back to the drawing board. There was no rescuing the parts of the sleeve, so I started over. This time I cut the two panné sleeve shapes and did not trim them down to accommodate the ruffles. I attached the white to the top, cut across at the elbow and inset the white ruffles there. Now the sleeves fit for real.

Besides, if they're a little long, you can adjust by shortening the little sleeve straps. I attached the sleeves to the dress (again, tricky because I had bound the sleeve openings). I also hand-anchored the dress sleeves to the lining shirt.

You might notice I omitted the little ruffles that appear at the bottom of the sleeves. That's because I had an epiphany. Serging thermal cotton stretches and distorts the material into a lettuce edge. There's probably more I can learn about my serger to counteract this, but here I wanted it. Using the cutter, I serged the cuffs of the lining shirt. Now, between the lettuce edge and the close-fitting stretchy sleeve at the wrist, white ruffles would appear when she wore the dress.

I was getting tired, but had decided to finish this costume the weekend before Halloween, when I had the time and brain space. so even though it was really awkward to get it into the machine, I used the buttonhole/appliqué stitch on my sewing machine to attach the little straps. It was pretty forgiving. However, the ones that had a core of shoelace turned out to have bright white sticking out at the ends in a noticeably ugly way. Thanks Sharpie™!

I am the first one to admit that I am a really janky hemmer. It's always the last step, and I'm already mentally done with the project. I measured the hem, I serged it (and damn it, it distorted again).  I folded it up and ran it through the sewing machine on a shallow zigzag stitch. It would work for a while, then the panné would get caught in the needle plate, and I pretty much fought with it for an hour and a half before declaring victory enough. Nearly there, need the elbow straps.

But the final costume was beautiful (she's wearing an extra shirt underneath for warmth). I'm really happy with it. We forgot to bring the bow and arrows to take photos, but at some point we might take a few more.

Really happy with how it came out.

Oh, hey, and PS: you can keep bobbin threads in a mint box. This changes my life.