Day Six: menswear bunny (pt. 2)

Status of pupil dilation: back to normal. Thusly, I am about to embark on the most difficult part of this sewing project for children - the sewing. Wish me luck.

Materials:
- pieces of material I cut out from last time
- stuffing (Wal-Mart)
- sewing machine (still from my closet)
- needle and dark thread (also from closet)

Step One: cut out ears in the right colour. (Two of the pieces were supposed to be a different colour, as I suspected but was too lazy to check. But it's all right now!) Step Two: iron the pieces so they are flat. So far, I'm doing REALLY WELL.


Step Three: put the ears together, with the sides you want facing out at the end of it all (hereafter known as RS, for right side) facing in towards each other. Sew along the edges, leaving a space between the seam and the edge of the fabric. (Martha Stewart says 1/4 inch, but I alternately sewed off the edge and into the middle of the ear, so I can't really say what you should do.)

Step Four: turn the ears the right way out so you can marvel at your ability to sew an item intended to be sewn by children. I think because the ears are so small and I left such a wide edge, it was really hard to turn them inside out. But I could! With the assistance of a pen. I did it guys! I sewed my first thing! I called my mom over, and she said it was quite obvious that it was a bunny ear. I'm doing it! It was very stressful, because the sewing machine kept wanting to go to fast. I was like, "Hey now, slow it down; we're not in a race," plus the ear was so small and I was worried about ruining it somehow - but the sewing machine and I are coming to an understanding, I think. An understanding of slowness.


Step Five: one more ear and two arms, done in the same way.

Several times during steps four and five, I accidentally unthreaded the needle. Instead of panicking, I took a deep breath and re-threaded the needle like a pro. Then I started sewing into the middle instead of along the edge, so I had to stop and undo the stitches. As I undid the stitches, I notice that my material is really thin, and now has a bunch of tiny holes in it where the needle went in. Maybe that's why Martha Stewart recommended menswear.


Step Six: put the pieces of the body together and stare at Martha Stewart's picture to see what is supposed to happen now. It is at this point that I realized, with a terrible sinking feeling of immense disappointment, that I did the ears wrong. Ears do not need stuffing, so they do not need to be turned inside out. Unstitch them both, and redo. My fabric is starting to unravel at the edges. Stuff from Wal-Mart is crap.


Anyway, Step Six: put two body pieces RS facing in, and sew together. Important to leave a space on both sides to attach the arms, with one un-sewn side twice as big as the other (so you can stuff the stuffing in the big side). Martha says something about notching with scissors where the legs meet, but I don't know what that means so I don't do it.

I forgot to take a picture of this part, but sew the ears inside the head, pointing down to the bunny's butt. This is really important, so look at a picture here. Sew it up, turn it inside out (so it's the right way out now)... Annnnd... the big reveal...


My bunny looks like crap. Stupid Martha Stewart and her stupid unrealistic expectations. And the notching is important, I guess, because between the bunny's legs are all bunchy.

Step Seven: stuff arms. I used my magical pen to get the stuffing inside the arms, because those things are stinking TINY. Step Seven part b: stuff rest of stupid, ugly bunny body.


Step Eight: attach arms to the disappointingly un-cute non-menswear bunny. I don't know how Martha intended me to sew the arms on after sewing the body shut, but the Frankenstein-style stitches made me feel like that old duck man in a wheelchair from Nightmare Before Christmas, which lent my bunny an even creepier air.

Maybe adding the eyes and nose will make it look adorable? (This is done with a hopeful heart and a needle and thread. Just go over the same spot again and again until you have a large enough dark dot that looks like a facial feature.)


Maybe not.

I had visions of lying with my tiny menswear bunny in my bed in Campbell River, during those lonely times when I realize that everyone I know lives a 2 hour ferry-ride away. I think if I were to wake up to this thing staring me in the face, I'll have a heart attack.

I hate to say it, but if every craft post on here has the tag of 'fail' attached, I'm not sure I can continue. I did warn you all at the outset that I'm not very good at crafty things, but I think I may have secretly overestimated my ability. THIS WAS A SEWING PROJECT FOR CHILDREN. For CHILDREN. A kid could definitely not do this. Unless they were some sort of sewing superhero kid, or else really good at reading instructions.

Day Six Highlights: wrangling a sewing machine, being able to re-thread a needle like a pro, initial success

Day Six Lowlights: the sting of consistent failure, not reading instructions properly, moving away from everyone who loves me

Tomorrow: I am going to Whistler for five days. I was planning on creating a squirrel from an old glove, but now I think I will stick to writing and attempting to take pictures. (That counts as creative, right?) And honestly, this might not keep going upon my return. I am really screwing all this stuff up.