This is what almost 1000 samples and fat quarters look like in the middle of cutting them out:
This is my favorite from this round:
This is what the trashcan next to my serger looks like:
This is the thread remnants after nearly 3 hours of snipping corners clean:
And finally, this is what a stack of nearly 900 8″x8″ fabric samples looks like:
The next step in the topiary process had to be digging up more fabric. After calling around, I located one store that had enough different colors so I could make it in one stop. An old blog entry I found while searching stated that Cutting Corners had many colors of burlap, but this is no longer the case. One location of Hancock Fabrics was worth the long trip out to the edges of the burbs. I think it’s not a current item, but their low burlap turnover has allowed them to retain some selection through the discontinuations.
Hancock Fabrics always has terrible signage; you can be looking almost right at it and not spot it while driving. Instead, it’s generally a good idea to look for the Big Lots sign. On the off chance there’s not one of those next to the Hancock’s, you can locate it with a Hobby Lobby or a Tuesday Morning sign.
I had really wanted Chris Robin to have blue pants, but it was not to be. There is no blue burlap to be had in the Dallas Metroplex. I considered khaki while looking at the burlap shelf, but while the shade was different, I figured it would be too close to what I was using for his skin tone that he would probably wind up looking like a horrible, pantsless little boy. The strategically-placed water spigot that keeps the plant alive wouldn’t have helped the situation. So brown pants it is.
This location of Hancock’s still carried these awesome scissors, though I had thought they didn’t anymore, so I stocked up. These are great lightweight fabric scissors that when I worked at a Hancock’s, we’d use to help our good scissors survive the fleece-cutting season–and they’d still be going strong at the end of it. Plus, they’re so cheap (at most places, between $1.50 to $2, and sometimes as low as $.75 on sale) that I use them like disposable scissors and don’t worry about people (i.e. me) using them to cut wire or some such thing as that.
Contrast that with those awful $9.99 sets-of-3 they’ve been pushing like they’re new for the past 2 (or 3?) years. To be fair, I haven’t used them, so I don’t know if the scissors themselves are awful, but Hancock’s tendency to force their employees to push stupid promo crap just keeps screwing over any good workers who are trying to develop real relationships with their customers–and while I rarely make it out to a Hancock’s anymore, it’s like getting in a time machine to see the piles of scissor sets clogging the cutting tables.
Because of the success of my method for pinning Rabbit on location and my desire not to have to undo and then redo as with Tigger, I prepped all the remaining 7 animals before heading out for the next fitting.
Eyore has a gimp leg (back left), and one extra-strong one (front left). I guess he does all his kicking with his right foot; I’ll just leave the story at that. Maybe he needs his tires rotated.
I draped the animals and pinned the heck out of them:
I’ll cheat and skip ahead to fitting #2. Rest assured there was much sewing and gnashing of pins between the previous picture and this one:
I marked him for some more velcro, where his eyes will go, and where to start his mane. The little pin-stars on his feet in the first photo became this:
I apparently left without a full shot of Rabbit, so here is a picture of his feet to tide you over:
I had originally pictured the overall-strap style of attaching chest to back only for Rabbit, but it’s winding up being the thing for pretty much every animal except Eyore and Tigger (pictured in the background). Also pictured, the everlastingly patient D., the real-life version of the Ryan Gosling Hey Girl Seamstress meme, and who probably does have a full body pic of Rabbit on his phone.
I put together a Roo ear from scraps, figuring that sewing in advance was just going to be a waste of time, like his mom’s hands were.
Second fitting:
She totally needs to shave her pits; there’s stuff growing in there, woman!
Piglet 1st fitting. Several people stopped to take pictures with him.
Second fitting:
I started Pooh, but it got too dark to continue. Got to mark his legs and diaper, though, which got filled with mud. Oh, Pooh!
I did get to see this, though:
The cool thing about fitting plant-folks instead of people, who would be mad about this sort of treatment:
On the other hand, I usually wouldn’t need to stand on a ladder to reach peoples’ heads; even a basketball player would stoop so I could get to his head if I were draping him for a balaclava or something for some reason.
Fitting 1.5:
I did his ears in the same manner as Roo’s. Also went home with a lot more mud in his diaper again; he poured water off his hands and down his legs the whole time I was fitting him.
Christopher Robin so far:
This is what his shirt looks like–nothing like normal-people shirts:
(Also, every time I look at that “cute and nerdy” bag, I start doing a double-parody on Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” song, which is my alarm clock, so it gets stuck in my head easily.)
Here is the angel (unrelated to the whole Winnie the Pooh story, but still a plant that doesn’t need to freeze to death in the winter):
Her arms proved to be waaaay easier than I first thought.
Now for the tragedy (yes, I am aware of what “tragedy” means in the classical sense, and I don’t really believe that Owl’s story rivals that of Oedipus or Antigone . . . well, maybe . . . )
Pretty much all of Owl is awkward and the formulas necessary to determine the pattern pieces by math would probably come from levels of calculus beyond what I managed to take in school, so there was a lot of pinning. And a lot of fabric. Look at that beautiful owl.
I discovered last night that the bag of Owl parts is missing. I can think of two parking lots that he might have been left in, and I asked around, checked dumpsters. I worked on the rest of the gang today in hopes that someone would go, “Oh look, a trashbag full of cut up burlap with pins in it–this must be important! Let me find the owner!” but it was apparently not to be. So back to the fabric store for yet more (locally-priced and no current coupons, alas!) burlap–fortunately brown is a readily available color–then back out to Fort Worth for a FIRST FITTING, gaaaahhahahahaahh.
The unveiling is tomorrow. Or, to be exact, it’s today, for 3 minutes already. I went online to find the starting time for all the festivities in the Main Street park down the way from Neiman’s (6pm), which will include a jet pack, not to give everything away. While searching, I came across this video from the year before I joined the crew, a year I’ve heard a lot about. It’s got both Carloses, Chris, and the mastermind, Larry! (disclaimer: mastermind, in my opinion; there may have been other masterminds involved who I’m not aware of… or is it “of whom I am not aware”?)
http://youtu.be/q0KicRnrUpI
I sat down this morning to finish planning all the pattern pieces for the remaining 7 topiaries, then rolled out my paper and started drafting.
Between wrestling cats for the use of the rulers, maneuvering around the harp, and crouching on the floor for several hours straight, I decided to go ahead and sling one of my new 4’x8′ sheets of MDF onto a table base and spread out on a table in my cat-free studio.
There are a lot of things that need moving around and reorganizing, and I was postponing putting up the table until I got that done–that, and because it’s freaking heavy–but having a workspace this big is fabulous.
Several hours later and I’m down in the atrium again:
Okay, so the best-laid plans of mice and men. A lot of pieces had to be modified to fit the yardage available; Pooh’s shirt got longer, and he’s now wearing 3/4-length sleeves, instead of the cap-sleeved midi he usually wears. It’s his winter shirt.
I ran out of belly and inner-ears for Eyore, but they’ll be pink, and I think I can locate that locally. Christopher Robin has skin and hair, but no clothes. I had intended to make his shirt red without looking up a picture; it’s not, and I ran out of red anyway. I could have sworn I’d ordered some blue for his pants, but discovered upon looking at the pile of unrolled burlap that there is no pant-blue. So about 3 yards short. Not bad for guessing yardage to cover topiary animals before even determining the pattern pieces.
Luckily, burlap doesn’t have a nap and it’s wiggly enough that if you don’t cut it straight, no one will be able to tell–all the pieces just barely fit. I wound up with a tiny pile of scraps (many of them so small they’re only in the scrap pile just because there’s nothing else to use to solve emergencies) and an even tinier pile of trash:
For this entire project, the Tigger Circular Reasoning Song kept getting stuck in my head on continuous repeat.
The remaining scraps of orange fabric with which to update Tigger:
Cats freaking love burlap.
Secret Cat had a hard time containing himself, spending the entire evening alternately sitting a few feet off and staring longingly when I was too close or sneaking up to sit on it when I turned my back or when there was a protective cat barrier between us.
Tigger’s torso, tail to neck:
The black square on the left is going to be tucked into his tail and not very visible, but will help make sure nothing is exposed to frost. The Goddess of Adequate Yardage helps those who help themselves.
Head:
(Again with the black patch to cover the difference between his neck and his arms.)
The entire remaining orange fabric:
Lots of stripes!:
I switched my sewing machine to the Princess, though I haven’t had time to pull her apart and clean/oil her. She wasn’t doing the problem things she was doing the last time I used her, so maybe she’s had time to think about what she’s done.
I’d had to switch because I needed a certain zipper foot that I only have in her size (low shank; the big, slow-witted brute I’ve been using takes high shank) for another project, and decided to just switch back over.
The Project: masks for a masquerade
I *transformed* a pair of Optimus Primes with some bling. Hot glue melts this plastic, so there’s a trick to it.
I found a broken mask at a thrift store with a lousy eye mask and the feathers falling off and gutted it for its iridescent feathers to add to a silver one for me:
The giant bag of mixed plastic gems I got for this project had about 10 large purple beads, 10 small purple beads, 10 large blue beads, and 40 each of nearly every other freaking color. We emptied the entire bag and flipped them all right side up to discover this. I had intended to make my mask with only purple gems, but it was not to be, and it wasn’t worth forcing it by going on a midnight search of craft stores. I still remember when these types of beads could be bought in separate packages of each color and size without having to send away.
I also blinged this butterfly mask for someone who wound up not able to make it to the event:
D. Didn’t want to set his mask on fire:
Masks on (the boys decided to rent tuxes to match their masks:
All the way on:
::Pointing:: I have a chin! Wait, at that angle, I have two! Yay!
I made that cape in college. It was the project I learned about nap on, the hard way. Bought the necklace broken and repaired it. The earrings are some pendants I put on some pierced-look clips.
Hair art:
The Project:
Fitted, semi-decorative burlap covers for 9 topiary animals for Cook’s Children’s Hospital
The geometry involved in coming up with the shapes involved in this project is crazy. While there are some near-circles and so forth, every single thing here is an irregular shape. I’ve got formulas for circle areas and circumferences, for right triangle sides, and for rectangles, but what is the formula for Pooh’s ear?
How many pins does it take to cross the breadth of an angel? Even the angel looks a little embarrassed about being so complicated.
The most time-consuming part of this project is figuring out the shapes and closures then drawing up pattern pieces.
This was my first optimistic planning option. Pooh is not going to look like either of these. Well, maybe Pooh will–I haven’t gotten that far–but on Tigger, the head involves 5 separate pieces and the velcro is not nice and neat up the center back. The more I planned and started drawing, the more I would realize more and more pieces that cannot be sewn together; these animals will not move their arms or wiggle their ears to squeeze into their clothes.
If cats knew math, they would be more helpful when drawing up pattern pieces.
I found a great local source for every shade of burlap you could want, 60″ wide; they could have renamed “apricot” as “Pooh colored” . . . on second thought . . .
But it turned out burlap was one of the things they can only sell as 50-yard bolts, which would have amounted to about a thousand spare yards of burlap by the time I was done using everything I could possibly need AND made myself matching burlap suits to wear while assembling each finished animal.
I found two sites online that, between them, carried a good enough selection, about half of which was 60″ and half was 48″. I managed to meet both of their free-shipping-minimums, though I had to order a few yards of lining fabrics and some samples to do it on one of them.
The client had requested me to start on Tigger first. I decided to make rabbit at the same time to help me determine how much yellow would be left over from Rabbit to share with Tigger. Once I finished Rabbit’s pattern pieces and went to cut out the yellow and orange fabrics, I noticed this:
I also noticed this:
Thanks to the Atrium, I could spread out both fabrics and switch Tigger snout pieces back and forth while I debated:
Then I returned to the location to test.
Okay, so it’s my first topiary animal. Tigger’s left leg has a large wire at his foot that is not very plant-covered, but is not forgiving at all, size-wise. His head is a really weird un-circle, and I overestimated the length it would take to cover his snout liberally. A lot of people passing by really liked him, though, and several asked if I was “making it Tigger,” and their wording implied that they weren’t previously aware that it WAS Tigger.
He has slightly defined hands, and I thought I’d be so cute and put in a drawstring to give him little mitten hands.
Burlap, however, does not slide against itself easily. What it does do easily is come unraveled. Drawstring hands are going to shorten the lives of these covers by about 99%.
On to Rabbit:
I had made his stuff a lot broader, with every intention of doing most of the planning with pins on location, so that actually worked out pretty well.
Notice the XOXOXOXO fence in the background. I didn’t either, until D. pointed it out. It was interesting how many people didn’t even realize any of the characters were from Winnie the Pooh. One girl even said, “Oh, are you going to do Pooh? He’s my favorite.” “Yes, that’s him next to Tigger.” “Ohhhh!”
A lot of the the kiddie-inspired accents around the grounds were subtle, some more than I even thought they were. It was nice that someone put a lot of thought into adding background whimsy all over the place to appeal to the subconsciousnesses of people who have a lot of other things on their minds.
Two non-math-related things I learned from this fitting:
1. I have GOT to locate the rest of my pins that I keep misplacing.
2. I need to bring a stepladder next time.
As promised, here are some shots of the finished, printed on, and finalized plastic covers I sewed for the windows we’re working on for the Neiman Marcus Christmas window display:
They were too big to get straight-on pictures of without running out into traffic, so here is also one of the “small” ones:
Also, here is another preview:
The Project: The slinky dress worn by Sigourney Weaver in Ghostbusters.
I whipped out my copy of Ghostbusters to get a good shot of the dress, as all the ones online show her sitting down. Here she is showing off her new look to Bill Murray:
And a convenient possession pose that shows more detail from a different angle:
Bill Murray can be seen examining the technique used to hem her lined skirt.
One of my clients commissioned me to make this for a relative who lives in California, and told me that its future owner was about my size. Convenient! I learned to sew on that size!
I draped the pieces on myself and decided to make it a shirt and an elastic-banded skirt for more size-range, with a whole lot of belt to cinch it at the waist.
I made the gold lining smaller for the top and cut the skirt at a different angle to maximize the movement and make it a little more obvious that it’s got two layers.
The fabrics used were tissue lame and crinkled tissue lame, so they puff out instead of draping nicely and looking wispy. I also tied a large bow on the belt because I was feeling too lazy to style the belt during the testing process.
I put it in these bags for transport because it was for a party:
Some years back, D. thought it would be funny to build a shed around an old trashed out piano. More lately, with a non-functioning piano taking up space in his shed, he didn’t find it quite as amusing. Our friend who can manifest anything, make anything work, and throw any item into any other item managed to pull it out into the yard a few weeks ago. He’s been spending all that time slowly dismantling it to salvage out the harp.
I managed to lug it into my loft and now it’s sitting in the middle of my cutting space just being a giant 1-200 pound harp with screws sticking out.
The screws on the floor are from pulling a piece off in an attempt at getting some other screws off from behind the strings. A quarter can of WD40 and a lot of sewing machine oil later, I now know they are not going anywhere.
I put the paper behind it to see what the brassy harp will look like on a white wall instead of on a similarly-colored floor. It’s kind of got that difference-lines thingy going on, though you can’t see it too clearly in this shot. (Yes, that is the technical term. And yes, I am sitting right here next to Google.)
The back isn’t quite as pretty–some of the wood is NOT coming off. After asking nigh-expert, Denise, who advised me that “if you really want to, you can take anything apart; it won’t be a pretty, decorative item afterward, though,” I’ve decided to give up on it, but rent tools to slice off the giant screws sticking out and leave the remaining wood.
I’m pretty handy about a lot of things, and I came up with a number of methods I could use to hang it on a non-studded wall. Then again, after quite a bit of assessing with the nigh-expert, I’ve determined to use resources other than my own handiness; one of the many benefits to working with a lot of creative people on various odd projects means knowing folks with pretty much every skill possible, or else knowing folks who know folks. One of the people on the other end of the panel-making process I do the velcro for also professionally hangs huge things from buildings. While it would probably take me several days and quite a bit of further research, as well as a gang of large men (why didn’t I get those bodybuilders’ numbers??), it will probably take Ivan about 30 minutes and the tools he has in his pockets.