Boy has been doing a project at school. A harry potter Project. Which started as a bit of creative writing, but as spreadeagled itself across every single class activity for weeks as they have scripted, filmed, edited and produced their own films. And written the title music. And then set about organising the Premiere – a beautiful invite heralded the imminent Potter night.

Boy informed me with a week or ten days grace that he needed to be Malfoy. NEEDED a costume. And no, the Quidditch robes that we have in the dressing up box with POTTER across the backthat are lined with Gryffindor Red won’t do.

I fretted not. That’s what eBay is for, yes? Simples. The weekend before the big night I had a meander around its listings.

And found that Malfoy robes apparently come in at £23 at the cheapest. Plus shipping.

Not to be tight, but… HOW MUCH?

I chuntered at C for a bit. “I could MAKE them for cheaper than that!” I declared.

He raised an eyebrow at me.

“And yes, I think I shall. Do I have a sewing machine or not?”

Thankfully, Mr Google was my friend, and found me a fably pattern which looked faintly manageable (you can see it here if you want it)

And so, with one day to spare I headed to the renowned fabric warehouse right on my doorstep (no, really, we actually do have a tremendously brilliant fabric warehouse in our teeny tiny little town in deepest darkest Dorset). The Black was easy, the green lining (yes! LINED robes! Get ME!) not so. What the bloody hell was Slytherin Green like? Lime? Dark? Bottle? Emerald? Royal? I gave up and asked the woman behind the counter. She didn’t know, and called across to her colleagues on the other cutting desk. A long queue of women customers joined in with the looking puzzled, shrugging and ooh-i-should-know-that-ing. Then a bright lovely lady called out ‘Bright bottle green!”. I shot off to the rack and came back with two to shake at her (6’ me shaking two long rolls of heavy green cloth… I am fancy-dress-creator-mother, hear me ROAR). She chose confidently, the rest of the queue nodded and agreed it was lovely, JUST the right shade, and so I bought it. The two lengths came to £18.

Cost saving my arse.

I still had to make the fecking thing.

It had looked easy… and it actually… wasn’t… too… hard.

Honest.

I have never made anything other than square things before. but this was okay.

We found some old iron-on transfer sheets in a drawer in the office, printed off a Slytherin badge to iron on, and hey presto.

One set of Slytherin robes with at least… 6 hours to spare.

If i do say so myself, they were bloody good too.