First I had to come up with an idea. A ghost would have been easy but maybe I'll leave that for the future. Instead I thought it would be really cute to use his leaf as part of the costume and I decided to make him a pumpkin. But it's the wrong kind of leaf, I hear you say. Look I know, but it will be cute.
Besides, I wanted to try out onion peel yarn dying, which supposedly gives you a lovely pumpkin shade. Collecting peels makes you feel and look like a crazy person at the store. I usually just went to the brown and yellow onions and lifted them all out and stuffed a produce bag full of the papery skins that were there. After two trips I had plenty. I felt like I was stealing, so I did always put the bag of peels on the conveyor belt with my other items. Each time I would tell the cashier, no, I want that bag of garbage, please don't toss it, it's to dye yarn.
Not quite the shockingly orange that most pumpkins are, but nonetheless still a very pleasant shade and what I would call pumpkin. Also it looked lovely with Anthos' skin and leaf tones.
Next I set about making the pumpkin suit. I figured I would be easiest to make an inside and an outside and then add stuffing between and use a little embroidery to get the segmented outside. So I just made two rectangles, one a little longer and taller than the other. Both had arm holes because I wanted Anthos' arms to stick out as I figured it would be funny.
I wasn't sure I had enough orange dyed yarn to make both the inside and outside however, so I made the both pieces from undyed yarn. Which was good since I used this first little skein to add the pumpkin embroidery at the end. Thinking back it might just be easier in all cases to make the outfit and then dye it, rather than guess at an amount of yarn and hope I have enough.
Once I had the two pieces made, I needed to dye them again. So I got a few more peels but I think I left it in too long, hard to tell wet... I let them dry, which helped the curling they had been doing, and then sewed around the armholes together so it would be lined up right. Then I sewed along the top and bottom.
Next I added some stuffing, less than I thought since I didn't want it to be too small to actually fit on him. I seamed the back and had a donut sort of shape that could slip over Anthos' head and into place. Finally, I used my first little skein of orange yarn to wind around the donut and segment it into more of pumpkin shape.
His arms sticking out really made it cute. So fat.
Something seemed missing though. So while wandering around a craft store I found a hank of green embroidery thread in the clearance bin for .58 cents and took it home and made him a pumpkin plant shaped leaf with a few curly tendrils to wear on his head. The leaf is from Amy's Crochet Patterns and I just tweaked the stem row to add a few long shoots of sc and slip stitches to get the long curly tendrils.
Of course we had to go take a picture with other mini pumpkins...
Happy Halloween!
Time to complete: body: 8 hours for crochet, dye, sewing and details
leaf: 30 min
Difficulty: Easy
