Harry Potter party

After 12+ years, a colleague found another job and has left for finer pastures. But before he could leave, he needed a Harry Potter themed farewell party.

Everyone rallied around the idea and 2 days later there were:

golden snitch Ferrero Rocher candies
Butterbeer
Polyjuice potion
Hogwarts House decorations
House ties
DIY wands
floating candles
balloon owls
Potter glasses
Sorting Hat game

The dogs and I were responsible for the Sorting Hat, the Marauder’s Map, Hogwarts House cookies, and the food labels.

The Sorting Hat:

Materials:

Black/ brown faux leather
posterboard

There were a number of tutorials online but considering it needed to be done in 2 days, paper mache or anything that required wetting and shaping material was not practical. So went with poster board to give the hat its cone shape. Did think about using extra firm interfacing but would need to shape the face and then iron on the interfacing and that just seemed too cumbersome.

Rolled the poster board into a cone and taped with masking tape. The top of the cone was cut off so the point could be folded down. Also the lining was pulled through the top and attached to the outer fabric.

Cut the lining to the size of the cone – about a quarter of a circle. Folded in half and sewed the edges wrong side together.

Put the lining inside of the cone.

Pulled the top of the lining through the cone.

Cut a larger (~ 8 inches) quarter circle, folded in half, sewed the wrong sides together.

Draped over the cone and pinned the lining to the outer fabric.

Made folds for the eyes and mouth.

Hand sewed the folds. Also sewed the lining to the outer where the tip folds over.

Pinned the inner and outer fabrics at the base and sewed them together.

Cut the 2 pieces for the brim – for outer and lining. The hat is supposed to look old and disheveled so free handed it.

Cut the center (made it too large – should have measured the circumference of the cone base)

Sewed the outside of the brim wrong sides together and flipped right side out.

Because the hole in the middle was too large, had to cut the circle to make the side sides overlap a bit. Sigh – not happy about the overlap.

Pinned the cone to the brim and sewed.

Need to find a cleaner way to attach the brim and the cone…

There’s a bit of an echo chamber when you put the hat on which is either annoying of kinda cool.

The Marauder’s Map:

Printed out copies of this blog’s pdf:

http://harrypotterparaphernalia.blogspot.com/2012/07/marauders-map-inside-and-outside.html

Gave it an aged look with brewed tea, scattered coffee crystals, and a lighter. Got a lil too enthusiastic with the lighter for some pages.

Folded and glued the pages together.

It came out nicely.

Hogwarts House cookies:

Made 2 doughs – chocolate and spice.

The chocolate is lilaloa’s chocolate dough minus the shortening.

The spice was her vanilla 2.0 with some modifications: https://www.lilaloa.com/2013/02/vanilla-20-sugar-cookie-recipe.html

Used dark brown sugar
Added :
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1 tsp cardamom
- 1/4 tsp clove

Was going for a masala chai flavor.

The chocolate dough was used for Gryffindor and Hufflepuff.

The spice was used for Slytherin and Ravenclaw.

These are cookie cutter stamps from William Sonoma. Don’t recommend – the impressions of the animals are much too shallow so if there’s any rising in the dough they disappear. The house names are a bit deeper but that just makes the dough stick in the tight spaces between the letters when you press hard enough to make the animals visible. Also, they have springs that get stuck for the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw cutters. On the plus side the sides that cut the dough are nice and sharp.