Last year, for World Book Day, the Girl went to school dressed up as her favourite character, Little Red Riding Hood. It was a costume that she had had since her birthday (her 3rd birthday had had a Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs theme), and she looked absolutely lovely in it. However, as a newbie parent, I did not anticipate that there would be 2 other little girls dressed the same, nor that I would be in the least bothered by the fact that prizes were given, and that she (predictably enough!) would not get any… All of that came as a bit of a surprise (or even shock), so this year, I decided we would make more of an effort.

I wanted something that would be personal to us, and yet would be original and much less likely to have been chosen by other girls. Back in the autumn, we had gone to see the ‘Scarecrow’s Wedding’ show at the Arts Depot in North Finchley, and we loved it (they go on tour this summer, so it’s well worth going to see it – link here). The show was based on the book by Julia Donaldson, and this has been a great favourite for our story time ever since. So the Betty O’Barley costume seemed just perfect for us.

Luckily for me, I found a pink dress with white polka dots on eBay (incidentally, a brand new ex-label dress from Next). I bought some edging lace, a green neckerchief (try as I might, I couldn’t find a checkered one, so settled for paisley), some white cord and a yellow straw hat (very handy that Easter bonnets are available right now). I already had a knitted red poppy which I had made a couple of years ago for the girl to wear in her hair for Remembrance Sunday, so I sewed this onto the hat. A very dear friend who does patchwork and consequently has lots of random fabric helped me by sewing the two patches (one green, matching the neckerchief, and one yellow, which very handily matched the straw hat), and she also sewed the lace edging along the cuffs and the hem of the skirt. To finish off the outfit, I attached the cord around the cuffs and the midriff, sewing on little loops to hold it in place, and I put on a piece of thin elastic strap to keep the hat on the Girl’s head. On the day, I combed her hair into two plaits (I thought cutting it into the shorter mop that Betty O’Barley has in the illustration would be going a step too far…).

Here is the finished product:

She really was the most adorable scarecrow I had ever seen, and – to make it all even better – she won third prize for her costume, and she was so happy about that! From my perspective, the best thing about it all was that her costume had been made just for her, with love, that I and my amazingly kind friend had both put in effort because we care about her and wanted her to know that and feel special … but winning is rather nice too! 🙂