Succulent Halloween Costume

I love Halloween but this year I had a bit of a panic moment when my kid came home with a flyer saying the school party was happening the week before Halloween. I had completely forgotten they always have their party the Friday before! Here I’d been thinking that I’d have a full extra week to work on his costume and suddenly realized I had less than a week to finish it!

He didn’t think I’d get it done in time, but he’s getting bigger now and was trying to play it all cool like he didn’t care. I think his exact words were, “I don’t want to go to the party anyway.”

Oh man, no pressure, right? There was no way I was going to let him miss out on this party because I know it’s a big deal to him even if he’s pretending otherwise! I had to drop everything and work on his costume exclusively until it was all done.

Now, something you should really know about this kiddo is that he’s a little bit different – but in a totally awesome way! He’s not huge into mainstream trends which is great because that means I get to make some really cool costumes for Halloween! For example, a couple years ago he dressed up as a squirrel.

This year he’s kind of sticking with the nature theme by asking to be a potted succulent. Specifically, this tall spiky guy we have in a pot on our deck:

Making the Costume

To start out with, I cut a rectangle out of fleece large enough to fit around his whole body. Then I folded the rectangle in fourths and cut a triangle on the top.

Unfolded there should be four triangles. I then sewed adjacent sides together to form a bit of a hat.

Then I sewed shut the long seam down the side.

To figure out where to cut face and shoulder holes I slipped it over my kid and drew some circles where I wanted to cut.

The I had to make a gazillion leaves. Well, 118 pieces to be exact, but it really felt like a gazillion. I just made a rough template so that all the pieces would be about the same and got to cutting.

I sewed along the curved sides first.

Then turned the pieces inside out and sewed along the bottom, leaving about an inch gap to put in the stuffing.

Before stuffing I painted the details on one side of each leaf.

Once the paint was dry I stuffed all the leaf pillows. I then attached them by sewing the bottom of the leaf pillows to the body piece in rows. The leaf pillows are pretty floppy as is so I also tacked them to the body piece with some hot glue. That helps them stand a little more upright.

The pot was made using three pieces of cardboard. The base is just one large rectangle and the rim is made from two thin strips stacked on top of each other to give it a little more depth. It’s held together with more hot glue and some tape and then painted.

It took me a little while to figure out how to keep the pot from falling down. I opted to go with a waistband. It’s basically a little mini circle skirt made from brown fleece that’s glued to the inside of the pot.

Here’s the final result (from the back):

What do you think?

And of course we need to keep our little plant happy and fed so I made him his very own plant food treat bag!