I made this costume for my daughter's kindy book week parade. The theme was Aussie children's books, and I was determined to try and incorporate a green tutu that I had left over from last year's ballet concert. My sister was the one who came up with the brilliant idea of a gumnut baby!
'Snugglepot & Cuddlepie' is a classic Australian children's book series written in 1918 by May Gibbs. It's about little fairy-like 'gumnut babies' who live in gumtrees and wear gumnuts and leaves as clothes, and have adventures with various Australian animal friends.
My costume is a sort of a cross between a gumnut baby and 'little ragged blossom' (they are all mostly naked in the books so I had to adapt it a bit and make it a lot less revealing). It was also a cold day and they were outside, so I put her in pink tights and a pink long sleeved shirt underneath the tutu.
The hardest part was the hat. I crocheted it using this pattern for a Christmas elf hat, but in yellow and green.
https://ashleemarie.com/double-loop-crochet-santa-beanie-pattern/
After scouring the shops for ages I managed to find some suitably fluffy yellow yarn to make the yellow blossom, but it's incredibly nasty scratchy stuff, so not a very comfortable hat in the end. Oh well.
Then I just cut some gum leaf shapes out of felt and sewed them around the tutu with little yellow pompoms to represent wattle flowers.
I didn't want her to ruin her ballet slippers outside so just put her in some other gold shoes she has. I used double sided tape to stick some more gum leaves and pompoms on them too but they kept falling off!
My daughter seemed to really enjoy wearing the costume on the day and got lots of compliments! We were able to use it twice more, once for the kindy Christmas pageant (theme: Aussie Christmas) and then for the school playgroup book week parade (theme: escape to yesteryear).
So I managed to get a lot of use out of that green tutu after all!
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