World book day - Mr. Bump and Coraline

Another year and another set of costumes, except this year I have two to make. Thankfully my youngest was a simple idea - Mr Bump. And daughter wanted to go as Coraline (yes, it is a book and not just a movie, but no, she has not read the book).

Coraline doll

I made this up as I went along, not following a pattern but just making sure that I cut the fabric in batches so the pieces matched up and were equal size.  The good thing about projects like this is that I can use up lots of scraps so didn't need to purchase any additional things.  I had been keeping my husbands old shirts in my scrap pile for a while which came in handy for both the legs of the doll (black and white tights) and the blue skirt.

I made sure to sew the button eyes and hair on the doll prior to completely stitching together and stuffing to make it a little easier. Although sewing the head on was a little tricky and you will notice from my first attempt I managed to sew it one backwards!

The skirt and top were fairly simple to put together but the mac did take a while and playing with paper to work out exactly how it would piece.

Anyway the finished item is below:

 Mr. Bump

I was going to make the shape out of 6 eggish shaped pieces but after cutting the first 4 decided it was going to be plenty big enough

I used a couple of rings of boning round the centre to help it stick out whilst also being flexible, the outfit had to be worn all day at school so I didn't want to use a hoop. I also got away with using a zipper foot to stitch the boning directly onto the fabric (blue fleece) so this saved time with additional pockets but was a bit hard due to the circular shape being created.

More old shirts were used to create mr bumps bandages and then I added a rolled hem on the neck line and threaded some ribbon through for a simple draw string opening.

When it came to the face I cheated...it was now 10.00pm the night before world book day and the pressure was on so I cut up some felt and stuck it with fabric glue.  Not sure if it was the fabricor the glue but it wasn't taking too well so I left it with pins in over night.

I didn't make arms or legs for this outfit as my son's school jumper was the right shade of blue (or close enough!) and he had a pair of trousers to match as well. I just cut slits for the arms to come out - no need to hem with the fabric.

So here is the finished article being modeled for you by my boy :)