Crafting with Fabric

I know what to do with paper but fabric is extremely scary to me.  When I was about 8, I broke my mom's sewing machine trying to fix a pair of Barbie doll pants.  Whenever I hear a sewing machine, all I see is that pair of hot pink and silver striped Barbie leggings disappearing into the opening with the needle.  

I'm sure you can imagine how I felt when I received a note from my son's first grade teacher telling me that he needed an alligator costume for the class play.  My first thought was buying a green t-shirt and going from there, I was definitely not doing something elaborate.  When I got an email from the mother of another alligator asking me if I wanted to get together with she and another mom to make the costumes, I made sure she knew I had no expertise in that area.  She assured me she had everything we needed and that I would be fine.  Not only did she have all we needed but she had been a professional costume designer in her life before children.  Not sure how I got so lucky!  She designed the most amazing alligator costume like it was nothing. (We had already ordered the hats, can't take credit for those.)  I learned so much that day and had so much fun!  Check out our gators.  My little guy is the one on the left.  Isn't he a cute gator?!  Little does he know but he will be putting the alligator back on at Halloween.  

 I wish I had gotten a good picture of the tails but you can kind of see them in this picture.