So I had hoped to be done today with my little Zombie friend, but as I projected, I have to wait until tomorrow to get some of the work done on the head which is holding up the rest of the process.
I also had to take a trip to the fabric store today since this is my last day of Thanksgiving break. That doesn't sound like something that would take too long, but when you live in the city with no car, it becomes a whole production just to get there.
Lucky for me today, I only had to walk a couple blocks in freezing rain, wait 15 minutes for the bus, take that bus, transfer to another bus, wait another 15 minutes in the freezing rain, get on the next bus, get of that bus, walk another block in the freezing rain and there we go. A small price to pay for a place with a pretty decent selection of faux fur...Their crafty selection isn't all that wonderful, but I did see a Michael's on the way back so I'll try there next time for that stuff. AND, there is a Home Depot close by that DOES carry the right kind of Contact Cement (some don't I've found) so that's good too.
Back to baby. I feel like I've put him in the corner...
Take a look at the wire coming out of his head in this picture, this is the basic idea for the hair.
This right here, believe it or not, is what is holding up the process. I have to spray it black and I can't do that in my building so when I go into work (building the sets as school) I can use the workshop to get that part finished. Once that part is done, I can finish the work on the inside of the head. I'm hoping that what I am using to secure the hair will double as more support for the hand relieving all tension for the puppeteer. Then it's on to covering the head!
Here's a picture of the body being covered.
So far I am really happy with this fleece. Even before picking out the stitches, it hides the seams pretty well which is one of the big things I was worried about.
Above is the covered body. I'm not sure how great the color shows but he's a pale green. I found it a very fitting color for a baby AND it should help to bring out his cuddly side.
Speaking of sides, here is his back side.
I couldn't be happier about the seams...You can kinda make out the one there running down the underside of the arm on the left but I haven't picked it out yet so it may disappear completely. I hid the body seams along the sides and at an angle that would be hard to see even if the fleece wasn't behaving so well.
The things we builders/perfectionists/(insert your craft here) go through...
I timed how long it took to sew just one foot. With possibly 4 minutes of interruption to instant message Kyle, it took 65 minutes to sew this ONE foot! The toes were such a...pain...it took all Saturday to complete both hands and feet, a task many people would skip and go straight to the sewing machine for. A task that would take 10 minutes at most on a sewing machine. (The same amount of time it took me to hand stitch one of the little toes.) This folks is why I enjoy the foam part more. However...I am very proud of the way they came out. I haven't even picked out the stitches so when I've done that, the hours will really have been worth it. That end result keeps me coming back to doing it by hand...Check out the Booties I found at Target too!
So now with school starting up again, I'm really not sure when I'm going to be finishing this guy. I was hoping tomorrow but unfortunately I have another sewing project that might have to cut in line. This one is all sewing machine though and just a whole bunch of straight lines, so it shouldn't take very long at all. Hopefully no later than Thursday I'll have some great pictures of the finished baby but we'll if not, definitely by this weekend.
There's that epic battle with time we've talked about on here, stopping by to say hello. I can just say that I'm glad we do projects like this right now so that when the time (and money) comes to do the big projects, we'll know exactly how much time to budget.
Wish me luck friends. I can't wait to show you how he turns out.
*D
P.S. "Toby" seems to be taking the lead both on here and with friend's who have commented verbally.
