Toto

The third and final part of the Dorothy costume I made for World Book Day (see here) was not something to wear, but rather an accessory to place in the pocket of the pinny I was wearing. It also happened to be the favourite part of my costume for the children at school. I made a knitted Toto. 

To make the dog, I used the book, 'Best In Show: Knit Your Own Dog', as I did when making the pug for my friend, and chose to make the West highland Terrier, and used some wool that I had stashed away from making a bear for my wife several years ago. 

The wool I used made it rather interesting to sew up the dog as it made seeing the individual stitches rather tricky. I took this as both a good and a bad thing though as it meant that although I couldn't be as accurate in the stitching as I might usually be, I figured that equally, nobody would be able to tell!

After I'd finished knitting and sewing up Toto, I made him a little name tag from a length of ribbon and a small circle of card which I simply hole punched and threaded onto the ribbon.

So, there you have it, the final piece of my Book Day costume, all of which cost me £6 in total, and was mostly made up of materials I already owned. It also took only about a week of my time, so all-in-all, took much less time than it's taken me to blog about them!

One blue pinny

For the main part of my Dorothy costume (see here) I needed a blue pinafore. In the depths of my mind (and my wife reminded me) I remembered some blue and white dotty fabric that I had lurking from back when I made my coat a couple of years ago. I fished it out of its storage place and began thinking about how to make it into a Dorothy-worthy pinafore. I had already decided by this stage that I would wear a blue skirt of my wife's and that the pinafore was only an overgarment. I therefore decided to make it a little more like an apron, as I figured that would both be easier and use less fabric.

I started with the middle of the pinny/apron, using the tie from the skirt I intended to wear as a guide to make a thick waistband.

Next, I made up some pieces for the skirt and the top section of the pinny, again using the blue skirt as a guide for some of it, and completely making up the top section by sketching it out on the fabric. 

Then it was time to start actually sewing some of these pieces together! So off I went, starting with hemming the top section on three sides, before attaching both the top piece and the skirt piece to the waistband. 

Next came hemming the remaining sides of the skirt piece, before making some strips for the tie of the pinafore, and attaching them to the ends of the waistband. The length of those strips was gauged by again using the tie from the blue skirt. 

It was then time to add the reverse side to the pinafore tie and the waistband, which simply required using the same sized and shaped pieces, sewing them together and then attaching them, right sides together, to the existing waistband and tie, leaving a gap for turning the right way round after clipping the corners. To sew up that gap, I simply ironed under the seam allowance and sewed along the edge, across the base of the waistband.

I then top-stitched around the waistband and tie to help keep them the right shape, and moved onto attaching a pocket to the front of the skirt. This pocket was simply sketched out, using the shape of the skirt itself to guide me, before cutting out, hemming the top edge, ironing the other edges under and then sewing onto the centre front of the skirt. 

At this stage the pinafore was definitely taking shape, with just the straps to add. To make these, I cut strips the determined width, and then pinned them onto the pinafore before asking my wife to help me work out just how long they needed to be to fit comfortably. I then sewed them right sides together, clipped the corners and turned them the right way out before top-stitching and then attaching one end of each strap to the waistband. To make this join secure, I stitched a rectangle at the base of the strap and then reinforced it with a cross in the middle. 

Finally, I added buttonholes to the straps and buttons in the corresponding place on the top piece of the pinafore. These buttons were simply ones I had stashed away and thought matched this project appropriately. 

And there you have it, one Dorothy pinafore, all finished. Not too bad for a made-up pattern, if you ask me.

World Book Day

So, today is World Book Day, and as I work in a school, I actually dressed up this year. For the first time in a veeerrrry long time. For quite a while, I was unsure what to dress up as; after all, there is an awful lot of choice! I also wanted the children I work with to stand a chance of guessing who I was (or at least understanding once I'd told them!).

Then, on Saturday, as I was knitting the whippet for my friend (as mentioned here), I thought about going dressed up as Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. That was that, decision made. I then set about making up a costume, seeing what items of clothing I could use, and what I'd need to make/buy.

Here's the finished costume, as worn today:

And here's a quick run-down of the constituent parts:

• Owned skirt
• Owned white top
• Shop bought and modified shoes
• Homemade pinafore apron
• Homemade Toto

Over the next couple of days I intend to share the making of those parts I did make, but until then, I'll just leave you to enjoy my ever-so-beautiful (or not) costume and the rest of World Book Day. 

Happy Halloween!

Just a quick post to wish everyone a happy halloween and to share this year's pumpkin carving effort. 

Seeing as until last year I'd never carved a pumpkin, I'm still relatively new to the whole carving thing. This year's pumpkin was grown by my Grandad, and is relatively small so trying to hollow it out was a little interesting. We decided to go in through the bottom, rather than the top, to make it a little easier. 

And here's the finished pumpkin:

I also figured this would be a good place to post the pictures of the Halloween costume that I wore to work last Friday for our Fantasy Fun Day:

Front

Back

So, Happy Halloween everybody!