Meet Edward Tulane

Not long ago, the delightful teacher of my younger son's class came to me with a proposition. She was planning to read 'The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane' to the class and wanted a stuffed rabbit to use for associated activities. She had searched everywhere for a rabbit that was distinguished enough to use as Edward, but had not found anything. Well, it seems that word of my sewing addiction has reached the school as the teacher asked me if I could make something that would fit the bill.

I don't make many toys, but creating this adorable rabbit was certainly a project I could enjoy. I googled as many images from the book as I could find. I also found a lady who has posted pictures of her own beautiful Edward Tulane stuffed rabbits. I found a book in the library ('Creative soft toys to sew' by Creative House) with a rabbit pattern that I thought I could modify to look the part. 

I decided to make everything from materials I already had, which was not difficult given the resources in my bursting-at-the-seams sewing room.

The main body is made from a lovely off-white cotton (op shopped) and the ears are made from scraps of white fur fabric left over from dance costumes. The clothes are also made from scraps. I used felt for the eyes and nose.

After I had made and stuffed the head, I slimmed down Edward's face with hand-stitched darts below the ears. I wanted the ears to stand up as in the book illustrations so inserted copper wire into each one. I used long wire so it also ran through the head and down into the chest area to provide head support.

I layered the parts of the eyes and handstitched each layer together before sewing the eyes to the head. I thought that was safer than trying to embroider the eyes straight on.

The clothes were made using a pattern for baby clothes, which I modified to fit Edward. I tried to make the colours of the clothes and the lace embellishments as authentic to the book illustrations as possible. I also added some hand stitches on the hands and feet to make rabbitty fingers and toes.

I loved this project and was over the moon with the final result. I think my Edward turned out a lot like the rabbit in the book and, although I am not a soft-toy fan, I was a bit sad to have to let him go!

I took him to JJ's class the day after I finished him. Since then, I have had so many children come up to me and say how much they love Edward. The teacher is reading the book to the class at the moment and the children get to take turns holding Edward during the story. It makes me all glowy every time I think about it. The class also made me a lovely card and the teacher bought me a beautiful scarf to say thank you. Thank YOU Mrs G for all you do for the children and for involving me in this fun project.

Great British Sewing Bee Challenge

“Sewers, you have a week to make a garment inspired by the current series of The Great British Sewing Bee.”

So were the words of Marianna from Sew2Pro last Tuesday.

Source

I LOVE the GBSB. I watched every episode of the first series on You Tube with pure glee and bliss and excitement and roller coaster emotions. Reality TV at its best! Hang on - there's a second series??? And there have already been seven episodes??? Let's just say that several hours over the next three days were spent very happily ensconced in front of the BBC on my computer.  Tip: if you are outside the UK, you can watch the BBC by installing this add-on from Media hint which works on Chrome and Firefox. The episodes will be available until 15th April and the final is tonight!! Get watching people!

So, after emerging, bleary-eyed from watching the first seven episodes (I loved every minute), I started considering Marianna's challenge.

I decided to include several things in my challenge:

- a time limit;
- use fabric from my haberdashery stash;
- use as many techniques from the series as possible in my one garment.

After perusing my stash (that took some time in itself), I decided to use stretch fabric (episode 3) to make a wrap dress (episode 3) and do some pattern matching (episode 2). Marianna kindly provided the link to some of the patterns used in the series and I downloaded the wrap dress. Some detective work revealed that the pattern was actually Butterick 5454.

Butterick 5454

I decided to use some stretch fabric with diagonal stripes for my dress and to cut it in a clever way so that the stripes criss-crossed elegantly and flatteringly at the front and met in a very aesthetically pleasing diamond at the back. No worries mate.

So, with the pattern printed and glued together, I set myself three hours for the challenge.

I think I am a pretty fast sewer. There were no instructions and I knew the pattern matching would prolong the cutting out process, but I thought three hours was doable. Ha! Little did I know....

Dramatic TV moment 1: The pattern matching was a nightmare. 'Like a TOTAL nightmare' as my son would say. I cut each pattern piece from a single layer then flipped that piece to match the pattern and have the stripes going in the opposite direction. But where was the opposite direction? The diagonal stripes meant that each piece had to be flipped 90 degrees, not 180 as I first thought. Oh dear. Knowing that stretch fabric needs to have the greatest stretch going around the body, this was a bit of a spanner in the works. However, after a quick stretch test, I decided that this fabric was of similar stretch up and down as it was side to side, so I just went for it.

I had to cut each piece as I went, rather than being able to lay all the pieces out on the fabric first. I had quite a large piece of fabric ($2 from the op shop - score!) so I thought it would be fine, despite cutting a couple of pieces the wrong way round and having to recut them.

I was wrong.

Dramatic TV moment 2 (head in hands, horrorstruck): The above picture shows the back skirt piece not fitting on my remaining piece of fabric. OK. Recover. Not to worry, I'll just put in a stripe matching patch and no one will ever know...

It took over an hour to cut out all my pieces except the sleeves and the waist tie. I was careful to match the stripes and orient them in the desired direction. I thought I'd got that right.

I thought I had, but I hadn't.

I pressed on. Having that timer running was way more stressful that I expected. The pressure on the actual GBSB must have been so intense.

I started sewing the bodice first. The back was looking good. The front was looking bad. How did the stripes end up in the same freaking direction when I was so careful cutting the pieces?

Then, with little time left, I sewed the skirt. Again, the back was the only reasonable section.

Before I knew it, there was only one minute to go! Very dramatic TV moment.

One minute to go!!!!!

I forced myself to step away from the machine and put the dress on the mannequin.

The bodice and the skirt were still two separate pieces. The edges of the skirt were unfinished, the sleeves and waist tie were not even cut out.

I saw Patrick and May approaching and hid the offending pins.

Fortunately Patrick and May allowed me to go away and finish the dress before they did their final assessment.

I was ready to run fast and far in the opposite direction, tossing the wrap dress in the nearest bin on my way past.

I considered my options. Did I have time to go fabric shopping and start again? I pondered some more and then an amazing thing happened. Project Runway's Tim Gunn murmured in my ear: "Make it work".

Gathering my dregs of enthusiasm for this project I picked up my dress and my timer and forced myself to continue.

It took me another 2 hours and 43 minutes to finally finish.

"The first thing I notice" said May "is that the stripes are all running in the same direction at the front...

...but in four different directions at the back"

"Completely intentional" I lied.

"The pattern matching is not bad in places" said Patrick.

"I love you Patrick" said I.

"And the top-stitching with the twin needle is handled quite well" added May.

I breathed a sigh of relief. Things were looking quite good. Until...

"Oh dear" said May, "what is this seam here? Has a patch been added at the back of the skirt???

"Oh help!"

"Meggipeg, you are the weakest link. Goodbye."

Well, it's definitely not my finest piece of sewing, or my favourite piece of fabric, but I did challenge myself and, despite some stressful moments, I had a lot of fun with this sew.

Is it wearable? Let's see.

It fits.

The back is pretty cool (can you see the patch?).

It could be worse. Actually, I really like this pattern and I challenge myself to get some really lovely stretch fabric (NOT striped) and make it properly next time. In three hours.

Betcha I can.

PS. Thank you to Marianna for a really fun competition.

Pimped up gangsta sewing. Yo!

I have just discovered Google Transizzle. It translates any web page into gangsta speak (yes, I have too much time on my hands!!). Anyway, in light of the hip hop concert I am performing in this weekend, I plugged in my latest blog post (the one about refashioning some shorts and visiting Santa) and the results were hilarious. Trust me, you will never read nerdy sewing posts in the same way again!

You can see it by clicking 'read more' below, but please beware of bad language! This is intended purely as a bit of fun and I do not want to offend anyone. If you do want to read on, it's worth reading the comments at the end!

Once you've read mine, translate your own blog. Go on, yo know yo wannit, straight up.

Cravat for Matt

Ahoy Masterchef fans! I know this is slightly out of date but I just came across some photos of my entry for the 'Make a cravat for Matt' Aussie Masterchef competition last year. This was to be a cravat for the ever colourful Masterchef judge Matt Preston, who always wears a cravat (necktie thingy). Here he is:

So, I thought I would enter. The cravat had to be made from Handee Ultra paper towel as they were sponsoring the competition. I decided to make a huge flower and dye it with food colouring.

I dyed the tie part with watered down food colouring and decorated it with Masterchef logos, which I had photoshopped on to a background in the same pink colour. I dyed the flower with darker pink colouring and used more concentrated dye on the tips  to define them. I then sewed a knife, fork and spoon from the paper towel and dyed them green to make the 'leaf'. It was good fun to do and I really liked the way it turned out. I was hoping that there wouldn't be too many people interested in creating something elaborate for the competition and I might be in with a chance of winning. This was sadly not to be - there were loads of entries and some were absolutely amazing. I really enjoyed looking at the website to see the new ones that were being added all the time. It seems that there are a lot more people out there who sew and craft than I thought. This makes me happy as I worried for years that we were a dying breed and eventually the fabric shops would all close down, as many did in Perth. But now, the trend seems to be reversing and there some lovely fabric shops around. Yay!