How Do You Make An Eggplant?

I don’t need to COOK an eggplant, I just needed to MAKE one recently. I got an email from my friend Judy a few days ago, and she said that I always tell her to “ask” if she needs something, and her email said, “Well I need something.”

All the teachers at her school had been assigned to dress as a fruit or vegetable for a “produce parade,” and Judy was to be the eggplant. I really didn’t know where to begin, but it sounded like fun to me. Judy had already bought two inexpensive purple bath towels and two green hand towels in hopes of somehow putting an eggplant costume together with those.

So how do you transform a teacher into an eggplant? Probably not many will be needing this tutorial, but you never know, so I thought I’d make a few notes for those who might someday get called upon to impersonate an eggplant.

I cut both ends off the hand towel to make the neck band and sewed the pieces together. I made this wide enough so that I could fold it over.

Using the rest of that towel and part of the other one, I cut six “leaf” shapes.

I then stitched the top of the sections together and zigzaged around the outer edge.

I sewed the leaves to the neck band, folding the band over and stitching again to finish it. I then used two pieces of velcro to fasten the ends in the back.

For the body of the eggplant, I simply stitched the two bath towels together up the sides, leaving an armhole on each side. I used the towel hems that were already in place for the casings at the top and bottom for elastic. Because the towels were soft, Judy stuffed them a little for fullness when she wore the costume.

Judy took the rest of the second towel and wrapped it around some cardboard and attached it to her “stocking cap” to make her stem.

She was quite a feisty eggplant on stage.

 

There is a reason for all this taking place at school. The teachers and principal were showing appreciation for receiving USDA grant money for the children to have fresh fruits and vegetables as snacks at school. They also combined a timely pitch for being drug free as part of an overall good health plan. I am so thankful that this kind of food has been made available to the children in our community, and I’m very glad to have been a part of making an eggplant for them.