Yoshi Egg and Super Mushroom Baskets

Halloween last year I completely forgot about the baskets until the night we went out.  I ended up just using an orange bucket we had laying around.  This year I wanted something that matched the costumes that we were making.  For Yoshi I decided to do an egg for his basket, and for Baby Mario a Super Mushroom.

After working with this plastic mesh during a failed Yoshi head attempt I felt it would be a great material for the baskets.  Since I have done some papercraft stuff in the past, I thought it would be great to use that as the templates for making the baskets.

I am extremely happy with how good these turned out, and think I will be doing this from now on.

These could also be used for Easter.

Materials:
11" x 17" Printer paper
13.5" x 22" Plastic Mesh - Joann
White Yarn - Already Owned
Red Felt - Joann
White Felt - Joann
White Fleece - Left overs from costume build, could just use Felt
Green Fleece - Left overs from costume build, could just use Felt
Thread

Tools:
Computer with Photoshop, 11" x 17" print, and internet
Sharpie
Scissors
Large Needle for yarn
Needle

Since I was going to use papercraft templates for this build I need to find some that would translate to the plastic material well.

I found a super mushroom that would be easy to make with the plastic.  The yoshi egg was not conducive to what I was trying to do, so I ended up using a pokemon egg.
http://www.nintendopapercraft.com/2008/04/mario-mushroom.html
http://paperkraft.blogspot.com/2009/01/pokemon-egg-papercraft.html

After downloading those I opened them in Adobe Photoshop and edited them to fit my needs.

Since I was just going to use these for tracing the image quality was not important, nor the colors.  I blew the images up made them gray scale and darkened them.

I printed them off on 11" x 17" tabloid paper so I could get a good size.

I laid the template down and put the plastic mesh on top.  Then just traced them out.  Repeating the sides 8 times.

For the mushroom I ended up just using the top of it.  The stem I just did a circle out of a single piece of plastic, then the bottom was traced after everything else was put together.

Cut out all the pieces along your tracing lines

Just sew everything together using the yarn and a large needle.

The Mushroom ended up being too large so we just took two sections out (6 instead of 8).

Also made straps out of the plastic as well.

Last step we cut the fabric and batting using the same templates and hand sewed it all together.  Apply any spots and handles.