Handy Dandy Handycrafty Thread

Important lesson learnt from this evening's sewing: Sewing small shit is a pain in the ass.

I'd been on the hunt for some subtly-patterned crepe fabric that'd be the right colour for a Joltik or twelve, and picked this one up when I went off on a fruitless search for polymer clay at the haberdasher's.

It's mostly trial and error (plus a bit of middle school geometry) to figure out what flat shapes make what round shapes when you sew them together. My main limiting factor was the beads I had on-hand for its eyes, so I drew those on a piece of paper and got a feel for how big the head would be, and consequently, the body. I could ramble about this for a while if it wasn't 4am but I need some record of how I did this for later, so. It's two rectangles, sewn partway down the long sides to make a tube with flappy bits. My original plan was this tube would be the body, with the flaps contorted and topstitched to make an approximation of this:



The resultant little pillow ended up looking like Joltik's face, with tiny forelegs underneath. The original plan was sew the ass-end of the tube shut, make a third panel with a bit of a curve to it that could be the front of Joltik's head, and sew that onto the body (and stick legs on the whole arrangement eventually).

This worked out smaller, ergo, better. I used superglue for the eyes though because I was pretty over this whole being conscious thing an hour ago. The result's sloppy, especially at the amended ass where I didn't have enough flap fabric to work with, but I can see where I messed up and do a better job on the second lightmite.



Also to add to the shopping list: bead needle, because I broke a bead trying to fit it over my thinnest needle, then to attach it to the face had to go needle, thread the bead by hand, thread back on needle, sew underneath to start point, put needle somewhere you won't forget it, repeat.