I can’t sew. Imagine if a monkey were given a sewing machine. I’m not that bad. But like, if it were a genuis monkey who’d spent its life working in a sweatshop in order to feed its monkey babies..it would probably be better at sewing than me.
But but but i can knit. and i can seam knitted garments AWESOMELY. and i can do spinning and felting and dyeing and anything else related to yarn and fibre. So sometimes I forget that I CAN’T FUCKING SEW.
A couple of years ago, Nik asked me to make him a little bunny foo foo outfit for his lenore doll. I agreed, and bought the fabric and looked at it and stroked it and procrastinated, then i put it in a box. It’s Nik’s birthday soon, and he is the hardest person on the planet to buy for, as he buys every single thing he wants (and lots of things he doesn’t want), and somehow crams them into his 2 bedroom house in boxes and boxes lining the walls. I try to avoid adding to his mole-man-ness, as when he runs out of space things mysteriously appear at my house. He was getting rid of some garden stuff a few weeks ago, I asked if he had a hoe (and not JUST because the name amuses me). I am now the proud owner of 2 hoes, a spade that is different to the 2 spades i already own but i forget how, 3 garden tables, and a green trolley thing on wheels that i think is meant for planting grass seed or fertilising the lawn or some shit. So when he said he didnt know what he wanted for his birthday, and i didnt know what i could get him that would be useful, appreciated, and not mean that something else from his house had to come live with me, I decided i would make this outfit.
I can kinda sew from a pattern, but obviously there is a gap in the market when it comes to patterns for bunny outfits for dolls with vastly oversized heads. Then i had the dilemma of whether to make the costume from the comic book or the one from the animation. In the end i chose the latter cos there are better pics of it on the internet, and the comic book one would have needed a giant oversized zip that is probably not something that has been invented yet.
So over the last few days I’ve been drawing and cutting and making templates out of muslin and sewing and sticking pins into my hand and whining. I have NO idea what was going through my head when i picked the fabric. I can only assume it was ‘wow, this is cute and soft and the right colour pink and it’ll make an awesome bunny outfit and doesn’t cost a gazillion pounds a metre’. The fact that I’d have to SEW it was clearly not at the front of my mind, cos it was horrible. It’s some sort of fleecey stuff but not really fleece and it’s stretchy and really thick and i couldnt do 1/4″ seam allowances cos it all bunched up under the presser foot and wahhhhhh. Oh, and making the ears stand up and not be all floppy. NIGHTMARE.
BUT, tonight i finished it. Vampy 1, sewing 0
