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It is Trick or Treat Week on ROSALILIUM

and we have lots of awesome Guest Bloggers joining us.

Today Emma from Oh Gosh Em is sharing her DIY Puppy Pumpkin Costume tutorial

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The lovely Elizabeth is allowing me to take over this space today to show you how I turned a cheap throw into a pumpkin costume for my puppy, Flash.

For this tutorial you’ll need

Orange fabric – I used a £1.99 fleecy Dunelm throw as i thought fleece would be soft on the puppy’s skin, but you can use anything. You’ll need enough to comfortably wrap round your pet, plus a little extra for the hood.

A4 piece of Black felt

Some scraps of green felt

A scrap of brown felt.

Black thread.

Scissors.

Sewing machine (you can do it by hand but it might take longer)

Tape measure.

Fabric pen.

1. Start by measuring round your pet’s neck and the fattest part of their belly and from the nape of their neck to their tale. Jot these numbers down and then half the neck and belly numbers. On a piece of paper (I can use A4 as Flash is small, but you might need to use something bigger, maybe a broadsheet newspaper?) First cut the paper down to the length of your pups body, then measure out the halved neck size at the top of the page, at the bottom measure out the halved belly width and draw a curved line up. Now is the tricky bit – making the arm holes. I had him stand on the paper and drew roughly where his paws were –but I’ll be honest it took a few goes until it fitted him so using cheap paper might be best! Your finished article will look something like this;

2. Next I popped the template on my fleecy fabric and cut myself a couple of orange body shapes, leaving a couple of cm’s each side for the seams. I checked they were the right size to his body before I cut the arm holes.

Don’t throw the template away as you can reuse it to make more puppy jumpers – like this one

3. If you’re using fabric with ‘right sides’ place them together and from what will be the inside of the jumper, sew up the sides, following the line of the cloth. Try it on your pup, just to make sure it fits. (The fleece didn’t have right sides, which makes everything easier.)

4. Now it’s time to shape the hoodie. Flash is a little boy dog so he needs a little more space to wee than a girl dog might, but i cut an arc out of the layer that covers his tummy and it’s not impeded his weeing yet!

5. Now it’s time to make the hood! Cut a piece of the fabric that is as long as your dog’s neck measurement. Fold it in half and then cut a hood shaped arc from it, like this;

I then sewed up the curved side of the hood, tried it on flash’s head and for size and then hemmed folded back the front of the hood to hem it.

6. To attach the hood I turned the sweater back inside out, turned the hood inside out and placed it inside the jumper, the right side of the hood next to the right side of the jumper – like this;

Inside of hood I lined up the front of the jumper so the hood almost met in the middle and pinned it. Once I sewed it and turned it the right side out it looks like this.

Now the jumper is done. It’s time to make the decorations.

7. Cut out 3 black triangles for the eyes and nose and a mouth. I’m not going to give you exact sizes as they need to look in proportion to the rest of the jumper. I hand sewed these on to the jumper.

8. To make the leaves and stalk, cut out 3-4 leaves from the green fabric, and a rectangle from the brown. Fold the ‘stalk’ in half, right sides together if you have them, and sew up the long edge. To turn it the right way round I wiggled a pencil through it, whilst making sure some of the fabric had ‘caught’ until it was right way round again. I sewed up one end and filled it with the scraps left over from the leaf edges. I then sewed the leaves to the top of the hood, and the stalk into the middle of them.

Phew – that sounds like a far longer process than it was – but it took me about 45mins in all – that included searching for the dog to try on his new jumper, snapping some pics as we went and a few breaks to check twitter and the likes.

But now I have a dog who can be dressed as a pumpkin for Halloween! Even if he’s not that happy about it!

And with a bit of adjustment to the decorations and colour you could turn your pup into any seasonal character you want.

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