Last year just after Halloween she announced,”I wanna be ‘Halloween’ on Halloween! And handed me a beautiful sketch of how her costume should look. The sketch was quite detailed and she was really clear about what she wants. Well..just like many other ideas it evolved over the year. And from last week I am hearing, “Ma, you know, I want to be ‘Autumn’ on Halloween! I think that would be more fun. We just need loads of colorful leaves!!” Our discussion continued about what are the main features of Autumn, what color palette we are going to use. Whether we can use something we already have and so on.

We decided that we will be using the colors we are seeing around us as our inspiration. Like all those wonderful fall colors on the trees when we drive to school. Magenta, rust, yellow, red, some reddish green and orange. We happened to have a magenta colored dress which we decided to use as our starting point.

Our plan is to stitch and glue decorative fall leaves and flowers on the dress, make a mask and make hair accessories. Pretty simple. We already gathered everything and now we just have to assemble them!Materials needed:

Dress of your choice. We choose a solid dark color (magenta for us) for the dress so that it can  pop up the colors of various fall leaves we will stitch/glue on the dress

Assorted fall foliage and flowers of your choice. (As stores already started stocking up Christmas stuff, I got these at 70% discount rate at JOANN)

• Matching thread
• Sewing needle
• Hot glue gun
• Mask
• Rubber band
• Hair band
• Scissors and wire cutter
• A small piece of fabric
• An enthusiast child to assist you!

How to do it:

1. Lay down the dress and arrange the foliage. Keep experimenting until you feel really happy about how it looks. We started at the top of one shoulder and came down in an angle to the midway of the dress. You can see someone else also decided to join the ‘Make In The Break’-Team! He just loves to be with us whatever we do.2. Once you are happy with the arrangement of foliage and flower, start gluing the overlapping parts. That way you only have to make few stitches to attach those foliage on the dress. I only glued the corners of the overlapping leaves.

3. After gluing all the overlapping leaves now stitch them on the dress. Few small stitches will be enough to keep them together.

4. Now do the same thing with the back of the dress. You can make the arrangement of leaves very simple for the back side of the dress. I just have leaves going around the neckline and the bottom edge. And that’s it! You have made ‘Autumn’!Now comes the accessories to go with the dress. First let’s make the mask.

Making the mask:

1. We bought a plain white mask and painted them with acrylic color. Used a blend of red and orange. I forgot to take a picture that time though.

2. Layer 2-3 leaves with different colors and glue them together with hot glue gun and finally attach them to one side of the mask. Make sure you are not covering any part of the eyeholes.Making of the flower rubber band

1.Cut a big flower from its stem as close as you can. With a thread and needle sew that to attach to the rubber band. Secure it by gluing a small piece of fabric over the rubber band.

Making of the leaf crown headband

Materials needed:

• A headband
• A stiff piece of fabric (I cut a piece from a discarded jute ba1.Arrange few leaves and glue them together keeping the biggest leaf at the bottom. I want this crown to be at the side. So locate the place you want to attach your leaf crown to your headband.

2.Fold that small rectangular fabric in half keeping the headband going through it and glue the fabric piece around the headband.

3.Now glue that bunch of leaves on that fabric.

4.Do the same on the other side as well.

5.Nicely tuck in and glue the bottom of the leaves to the headband.

We have the AUTUMN costume with all the accessories ready to mix and match with it.Few possibilities are

• Just the autumn costume.
• Autumn costume and the mask
• Autumn costume,mask and flower rubber band
• Autumn costume,mask and leaf crown
• Autumn costume and the leaf crown

Now this little ‘AUTUMN’ is super happy with her costume and ready to go out with her friends. The other day she was mentioning to her music teacher that it would be really fun if 3 other friends dress up like Summer, Winter and Spring! Then they will play Antonio Vivaldi’s ‘The Four Seasons’ while walking together. What a beautiful idea!

Wish you all a happy and safe Halloween.

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