Mild panic time – the dress making timetable has been moved up somewhat. Turns out I have some corporate awards thing I need to go to in November and because I hate shopping, I figure I’ll use the dress for that as well, even if it does cut a month off my making time. My overlocker and I had a long conversation about its behaviour and we seem to have reached an agreement that it will behave itself on the condition that I won’t constantly swear at it. A successful row of serging later and it was rewarded with a “Get in, you beauty!” Anyway, I’ve stopped dithering – I’ve ordered all the trimmings that I need for it and I’m cracking on. Next quandary is do I need new shoes to go with this or shall I just stuff some DMs on underneath it?
In fairness, I’m no stranger to the insane last minute ideas and rush to get them done. A few years ago, I had Christmas at my house and invited a bunch of friends over. About a week beforehand, I realised my gift for one of my friends who notoriously over-spends, was a little inadequate, so I thought “oooh I’ll buy some air dry clay and make a bunch of plants from Plants vs Zombies” (she loves that game). I could’ve bought her something from a shop, but noooo – that’d be way too easy.
Bearing in mind that this obviously coincides with me making my house look nice, preparing food for the meal(s – one has to cater to both ones’ carnivores and herbivores) and attempting to find the one tablecloth I have that comes out once a year, it was a pretty stupid idea. But hey – I’ve never let my own idiocy stop me yet!
Some of the plants are pretty easy to make – the potato mine is essentially just a dome, with a bobble on top and the wall-nut is a lumpy oval. The chomper and kernel-pult were another matter.
The chomper has a head that’s significantly larger than its base and when you’re working with lightweight air dry clay, this means it tends to face-plant (no pun intended). I solved this issue with some clever weight balancing using some strong wire and by wrapping a bunch of pebbles inside the base to weight it down.
The kernel-pult is a corn on the cob and really only looks affective if you roll each kernel individually. Which means they all need to be the same size. Ugh.
The final coats of varnish and paint were slapped on the models on Christmas Eve. I hastily Christmas wrapped a shoe box in order to give them a more pleasant presentation and ta-dah! I was so pleased/relieved to get them done in time. Sadly, my high did not last as I forgot to put the pigs in blankets in the oven for lunch. Oh well – win some, lose some.