It’s the first of September. Time to go back to school!

A year ago, my roller derby team, or former I should say as I’m currently retired, had an Harry Potter fundraiser pub quiz, so I used my craftistic skills to create some prizes for the evening, which was fun and successful!

For some reasons, I’m always more motivated when I’m working on some projects that it’s not for myself and I really enjoyed the themed crafting!

I had one clear idea in mind and another than builded up as I made stuff.

The first was Quidditch robes. I researched a bit before and even went all professional and made some sketches:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BXQbh7AlnsY/?taken-by=tinastrangeatdark

The reason why I chose to make a Quidditch robe rather than a school uniform one was that they are knee length, so that it would be less fabric to sew, hence easier to handle, as well as it would be easier to fit shorter and taller people without being massively big for a tiny person. The Quidditch uniform changes over the years, and this one is inspired by Harry’s first year robes in the movies. It’s very similar to the school ones in shape only with shorter sleeves and length. It wasn’t the first time I sewed a robe: a few years ago I sewed a Jedi one for the a friend for a cosplay party. Overall, it’s not very difficult and it can be done very quickly, but this time it needed a gold lining so it was a bit trickier and I had a little mishap. When I went to turn it, I couldn’t… Picture below. So I had to unsew the bottom of the sleeves and topstitched them.

 There are several tutorials to follow, I’ve put a list at the end of the post, even though I didn’t refer to only one specific while sewing this one, but rather pick and chose what I needed. And here it’s a list of the material:

• 2-3 meters of red wine cotton and 2-3 meters of golden lining depending on size.
• A Gryffindor  patch bought on Etsy
• About 1 meter of golden cord
• Eyelets. However, I couldn’t find them in the shop because I couldn’t remember the name in English, so I made small holes and used the 4 steps buttonhole foot in my sewing machine. They are a bit tight, but it works.

Finally, the presentation! As this was a prize, I wanted to make it special for whoever was going to win it. The cool thing was that I used whatever I found in the house, so a box from FairyLoot, some paper, golden paint and some imagination.

The second project, 4 stationery sets, was a bit different as I didn’t know exactly what I was doing. I started playing around with clay, then added some bookmarks and finally “wands”. The wands are made with a hot glue gun, pencils and paint. Just add the hot glue on the pencils in different ways, and then when cold, paint over. I used first gold paint and then brown.

However, once I had all these small bits, I wasn’t satisfied they would make any good prize on their own, and after thinking and thinking, the bulb lighted… after all it was back to school day, so the Hogwarts Houses Back to School Stationery Set were quite fitting.

For this last one, I used mostly material I had in the house:

• pencils
• paper: thicker and coloured for the boxes, white and thinner for the tags and bookmarks
• jute cord
• watercolors&other paints
• the laminator to laminate the bookmarks
• clay: the grey one that dries in the air not the oven one
• miscellaneous findings for the keyring and pins

I find that a bookmark is always a quick and nice craft to do for a last minute gift: you can use paper or even canvas, paint it or drew with pencils or even just a black fine liner, then laminate it and add some thread or cord with beads, and ta-da!

So, that’s all for the Harry Potter themed crafting session! I did a GOT one a few months after for another pub quiz and I will write another post, but now it’s time to wrap up as I have a 20km run waiting for me in the morning.

References:

SEWING A JEDI OR HARRY POTTER ROBE OR CLOAK on Instructables

How to Make a Jedi Robe on DeGraeve.com