So this is an old project I did last year for History day at school, for Violet(if you are wondering who Violet is read here..) She had to dress up as a historic character. Initially I had lots of people in mind that I could have dressed her up as, but I wanted her to learn something from the person she was dressing up as. As soon as this thought came to my mind, there was an instant choice.. Mother Teresa who is known for her kindness, compassion, selflessness, humility and love. Such an amazing woman!

“Kind words are short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless,”. -Mother Teresa

“In life we cannot do great things, we can only do small things with great love”.- Mother Teresa

So, then I searched here and there..(just Pinterest actually 😉 ) of how can I make a costume. Mother Teresa always used to wear a white saree draped in a particular way and the challenge was that how will Violet wear a saree all day at school and use the toilet too 🙂 (even I struggle with wearing a saree!). Another challenge was that I have no sewing machine (If you haven’t lived in an apartment in Doha with 3 kids, you have no idea how much storage issues you can have . I will do some organization posts for apartment living later), so I wanted something with minimal/no stitching at all.

Here is what you need. I had an old white bed sheet that I used for the saree. Saree is a long single piece of fabric that is tied around, I decided to break that in two for Violet – a skirt and then an long stole that I draped and secured with safety pins.

I basically cut the sheet in half and put the blue tape I found around both the rectangular cloths. For the skirt, I did a little stitching(by hand…yes my fingers hurt later!! ) and stitched the ends together and put an elastic in it for Violet to easily wear and remove it (specially for toilet breaks at school).

For the upper part of the saree, I used hot glue to secure the saree on an old headband (this ensured that it stayed on her head all day without slipping- which btw it did perfectly).

Then I cut up the cover of foil box in a cross and hot glued (Yes …Hot glue gun is my new best friend after my bestie ofocurse 😉 ) it on a clip.

And gave her a Tasbih (prayer beads) to hold……and my adorable little Mother Teresa was ready to go! Her costume was a hit and as she walked in school, the Head of Primary came running to say hi to the little Mother Teresa 🙂

Hope you enjoyed this tutorial.