Last weekend I finally got to unpack the many boxes marked 'craft stuff', as the little room which was P's temporary bedroom is on its way to being a workroom/office space. In other words I spent a relatively peaceful afternoon untangling random balls of yarn (not as many as I thought as it happens) and trying to find ways to sort and store a lot of scrap and resuable fabric (lots more than I thought). With this yarn/fabric lack of balance revealed, along with all my sewing notions and box of threads, I've been inspired to get some sewing done this week.
A lot of what I've done has actually be useful, round the house type stuff (I seem to remember that this was meant to be the plan for the first three months of the year...oops! Better late than never!) I'll post about that soon. In the meantime, I wanted to share this little bit of fun.
Actually, sewing with 'fun' fur isn't really fun at all, even when using a floating embroidery foot. But the good thing is that there's no need for hemming, so the tasks of adjustments in shape of hat and length of trouser leg are just a simple snip, rather than unpicking and resewing.
To make my little tiger's legs, I simply folded an existing pair of jogging bottoms in half and used them as a template, rather like the way Amanda Soule describes in 'The Creative Family' when she makes old t-shirts into trousers- my Christmas present cutting wheel was invaluable for this. I ended up doing a bit of unpicking as amid the family chaos around me I forgot which seam to sew up first, and chose the wrong one. Spend a moment thinking about it and it's really not that hard. Also, having made a nice long tail out of a long tube of fabric, I forgot to sew it into the back seam, so a bit more unpicking. I had to handsew the tail into this seam as four layers of fun fur just don't go through my sewing machine. I made a simple elasticated waist so he can pull them on and off easily (useful fo
To make the tiger hat I dipped into the delights of a belated birthday present from my sister, Oliver + S's 'Little Things to Sew' (buy it, it's gorgeous!). I used the pattern for the 'Cozy Winter Hood'. Knowing my little boy's rather large noggin, I chose the largest size, forgetting that, since I wasn't lining it, it would turn out even bigger. In the end I made a tiger hat that would even fit C, the originator of the big noggin genes. Still, nothing a bit of trimming and off-piste dart making couldn't fix.
I realise, looking at this post, that it reads like a farcical list of errors made by mother trying to sew amidst an ever-curious toddler, a squeaking baby and getting the tea ready. Actually, that's about the size of it. But the thing that is fun about sewing with fun fur is that it's very forgiving, covers a lot of mistakes and pretty quickly gives the results that any toddler would be happy with. Catching a tiger for a photograph on the other hand, is not so easy...
