World Book Day

Apparently it's World Book Day this coming Thursday and DS's nursery have asked that all children attend in a costume depicting a character from their favourite book, which for my little man is The Gruffalo.
Now, from what I know of the Gruffalo, apart from that he is brown and furry, is the following....

"He has terrible tusks, and terrible claws, and terrible teeth in his terrible jaws. He has knobbly knees and turned out toes, and a poisonous wart on the end of his nose. His eyes are orange, his tongue is black. He has purple prickles all over his back. He IS the GRUFFALO!" Lol..

So for the 1st time in a very long time, I have had the sewing box out of it's corner of the sitting room and have been delving through my collection of fabric scraps and ribbons.
I acquired a brown fleece blanket from my Mum (thanks Mum :D), found some purple ribbon in my ribbon stash (I always keep all ribbons from flowers, gifts etc. as they are great for scanning in to PS for digi scrapping and for all sorts of arts & crafts).


The Basic Kit

My 1st step was to decide  on how to make the "body" I toyed with the idea of a cape, but bearing in mind DS is under 3 yrs old I came to the conclusion a tunic would be better for a rampaging toddler. Ds just so happens to have a Thomas The Tank Engine tabbard  style apron for painting and other messy activities so it provided the perfect pattern for cutting the fleece blanket to shape, I then used some brown ribbon found in the bottom of my sewing box for tabs to stop the tunic flapping as he walks and runs.

The Tunic

After that came the Purple Prickles! 

I got to work cutting lots of triangles out of the lovely purple ribbon, which ds absolutely loved throwing everywhere! Grrr..

In the end I had about 30 of what was probably 40 or 50 but the remainer have been liberally scattered to all corners of the sitting room by a toddler throwing them in the air and shouting "Triangles!" at the top of his voice LOL.

I got to work sewing the purple prickles to the back of the tunic, just randomly placing them as I went rather than a regimented pattern, a few thumb stabbings later I had finished, with 20 prickles in place, that is the back of the Gruffalo finished.

He has Purple Prickles all over his back!

So that's my progress so far, I now need to make a hood to go with it and maybe a mask that a toddler can tolerate for more than 10 seconds, but I am happy for now to have broken the back of the project and have made a good start.

More to follow when the hood has been made :)

Sarah x