Halloween Costume 2016 - "FR E SH A VOCA DO"

The inspiration?  my LOVE for avocados + the FR E SH A VOCA DO vine + perusing through Pinterest and seeing beer bellied men using their bellies as the avocado pit... I thought: my son has a pretty decent size belly too...

... and the idea stuck and I couldn't get it out of my head.  BUT, how does one make a toddler avocado costume?  First I tried seeing if I could just go buy one. haha!  Of course there weren't any that I liked.  "If you want something done right, ya gotta do it yourself."

So, I started with tracing James. That was fun. Can you imagine making a 1.5 yr old lay still on the hard wood floor as you try to trace neatly around him?  lol.  Once I got a general outline of his body, I was then able to draw an outline of an avocado around it.

The next wrestling match was trying to get some actual body measurements - chest, height (length?) of head, circumference of head, torso length, arm circumference, etc.  I honestly didn't know exactly what I was doing. I just took it one step at a time. I did know that I wanted it to be 3D and puffy!

Being that this was my first time to make a costume for a human, I made a lot of mistakes - but that was part of the fun.  I learned while I created! ;)

Here, I tried to make a paper version.  This was as far as I got and it's quite rough.

I died yellow fabric with food coloring to get the right gradient effect of real avocado. 

The small slit in the center between the yellow and green fabric is the arm hole.

The innards: I basically sewed a bunch of mini pillows.

 

Velcro makes it so much easier to pull on and off.

Close up of the head hole for his round face.

Fail & Learn:

• First, I cut the avocado shape out of the yellow fabric and dyed the edges to give it a gradient.  I wanted it to be firmer so I cut out two pieces of fabric and sewing it together.  After doing this, I wish I had sewed on the second layer towards the end.  This second layer would have hidden my stitches and it would have been much easier to just machine sew all of the pillows on, but instead, I had to hand sew all of the pillows to the inner layer because I had already sewn the two layers together. :(
• I also learned that the head hole should have an elastic band at the top of the head to keep it on. I realized after I finished that James was able to just tilt his head forward and stick his head out of the costume very easily. 
• I accidentally sewed over my arm holes.  I had to go back and unstitch the opening, but I learned how to sew off stitches that otherwise would have been loose and come undone because I had to cut it.
• I made the opening at the bottom too narrow so that the roundness of the avocado at the bottom was lost.  I can easily fix this by ripping the thread out on both sides and make the seams between the yellow and green piece end higher on his body, but at this point, I AM JUST TOO LAZY. ;P
• Lastly, PIN EVERYTHING down before you sew.  Even if it looks like it'll be fine and the stitch will be straight.  Just take a little bit of time in the beginning to pin it and you will save yourself a whole lot of time and headache in the end.

OVERALL, I'm pretty pleased with this project and I had so much fun making it!  

Happy sewing and creating! ♥ jen