September, October, Where Did You Go?

So I was going to blog in October about how September just came and went. Now it’s already November so September and October have both appeared and vanished for another year.

My original intent was to blog about the past revisited. It started with a  request from my daughter to make a costume for my grandson. He had been invited to a woodland themed birthday party and she wanted a gnome outfit for him.

Ok I can do that after all when she was little I made her a Pilgrim outfit, a butterfly and a Snow White costume. The Pilgrim outfit I had a pattern to guide me, the butterfly was made from a craft magazine pattern and the Snow White was just my own creation using what I had at hand. When she was a butterfly I realized I didn’t have anything for her brother who was still at the crawling stage. Then I spied and old ugly green sheet (think 70’s) and whipped up a caterpillar outfit for him. When she was Snow White I made him into a Prince Charming again at the last minute.

Oh Tutu I don't think so! Gnome prototype

So I finally got around to tackling the gnome. I had a rough idea in my head for this but I had to make a few prototypes first. I discovered he did not want anything around his mouth so the mustache I had planned was out. My daughter was a little dubious about how I was constructing the beard because I used a piece of stiff interfacing just to get the length and width. The hat I made was droopy and she wanted a pointy hat. So I made an insert of the stiff interfacing to make the hat stand up. The beard was made from an unused mop. I cut some strings from the mop and sewed/glued them to some twill ribbon. One end of the ribbon was sewn to the  hat and the other end snapped onto the other side of the hat. The hat was made from fleece so it had some stretch to it.

Mama and her little gnome

Then came the shoes which I had not planned to do but was requested the morning of the party. So back to the drawing board. They almost didn’t happen. We wanted them to slip over his regular shoes so I traced around the sole of the shoe and then came up with a way to encase the shoe with felt. I intended to put some wire to make the toe ends curl up but we wound up just pinning them with safety pins. The belt was made from some leftover vinyl I had and a buckle was made from the stiff interfacing.Everything else was store bought. I thought it came out pretty good for a last minute project. I’m still working on perfecting the shoe pattern. I’ll share it when I’m done.

The reason I was so late in posting this is I was trying to find the photos I had of my young children in their costumes. No luck so far so you’ll just have to settle for a picture of my grandson in his appearance as a little gnome.

The gnome in the garden

All photos courtesy of my daughter. For more on this project see her blog Little Girl Dancing!

Happy Stitching!

Rose