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| 'My Fairy Box' by Jenny Stacy |
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| Velvet flowers at Liberty |
Maybe fairy clothes should be made entirely from flower petals, leaves and acorn cups, and their wings from dead dragon flies or butterflies. But we've got two hours on a Thursday night to make a fairy and our ingredients will be: netting, lace, calico (for the bodies), sequins and sparkly bits.
Yesterday in the shop I drew a tiny little person and cut two from calico and then it took me all day to hand sew round it with tiny stitches and turning it inside out to stuff it - well you can imagine how difficult that was. Now it is stuffed and ready for clothes and hair and face and wings but no way could we make that fairy in two hours.
I hand sewed this fairy because we won't have sewing machines at Winton House. What I can, and probably will do is to hand out the fairy pattern to people who come and also make a load of little nude fairies on the sewing machine which people can dress and give hair and a face and wings to.
It's the arms and legs that are so hard to turn inside out and stuff. You can get round this by giving fairies pipe cleaner limbs or wire wrapped in embroidery silk threads. Flesh coloured pipe cleaners would be useful but I don't think they exist. Or you could wrap glue soaked paper strips round wire or drinking straws.
I've given the wings a lot of thought. When I regularly made fairies my friend Bee made the wings with water soluble fabric, machine embroidered with irridescent threads. They were great. Now I'm thinking that we'll stiffen pre-cut fabric and sew the wings on. I've got lots of see-through glittery 'fairy' fabrics already and will get netting or tulle as it's known for the dresses and full tutu skirts.
Faces can be drawn on or embroidered with embroidery silk strands for hair held in place with a crown of tiny flowers perhaps.
I can imagine a 'Make your own fairy' kit for the shop now. Thanks for bearing with me while I was thinking fairies.
Yesterday in the shop I drew a tiny little person and cut two from calico and then it took me all day to hand sew round it with tiny stitches and turning it inside out to stuff it - well you can imagine how difficult that was. Now it is stuffed and ready for clothes and hair and face and wings but no way could we make that fairy in two hours.
I hand sewed this fairy because we won't have sewing machines at Winton House. What I can, and probably will do is to hand out the fairy pattern to people who come and also make a load of little nude fairies on the sewing machine which people can dress and give hair and a face and wings to.
It's the arms and legs that are so hard to turn inside out and stuff. You can get round this by giving fairies pipe cleaner limbs or wire wrapped in embroidery silk threads. Flesh coloured pipe cleaners would be useful but I don't think they exist. Or you could wrap glue soaked paper strips round wire or drinking straws.
I've given the wings a lot of thought. When I regularly made fairies my friend Bee made the wings with water soluble fabric, machine embroidered with irridescent threads. They were great. Now I'm thinking that we'll stiffen pre-cut fabric and sew the wings on. I've got lots of see-through glittery 'fairy' fabrics already and will get netting or tulle as it's known for the dresses and full tutu skirts.
Faces can be drawn on or embroidered with embroidery silk strands for hair held in place with a crown of tiny flowers perhaps.
I can imagine a 'Make your own fairy' kit for the shop now. Thanks for bearing with me while I was thinking fairies.
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