Wednesday 21 May 2014

Copy, right?

So, Gentle Readers, where have I been?  I have been making something.  When I say "making" something, I mean, from scratch.  Well, I don't mean that in the 'growing the cotton' kind of way, but more of a "I want to make one of these and there's no pattern on the market, so I'm going to make my own".  That's not strictly true - there are a couple of patterns out there, but they are both for the furry jointed doll kind of thing, which I didn't want to make at all.  I wanted one I could make in cotton, stitch together on the machine, fill with fibre-fill and be extremely cute.

What was I thinking?

My first attempt was based on a line drawing I found on the internet, which looked like this:

But ended up looking like this:



Which, as you can clearly see, is more mutant than marsupial.  Where's the front legs?

Anyway, I left it for a couple of years (you know how life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans, thanks for the reminder, John Lennon), and then I saw a rabbit in a fabulous clothing shop in Avalon, which is just up the coast (about 10 minutes by car) from me.  Anyway, this rabbit was nothing special to look at, but I had a sticky* at how they'd made the ears, and thought "oooh, I can use that!!", so I paid my $20, confessed to the woman in the store that I was going to cut it up, and wondered off.

Anyway, after doing this to the rabbit:



and making these:




Ugliest thing I've ever made.  Seriously.


Weirdest looking thing I've ever made.

I decided that I needed to go back to the original shape idea:







and it was so close, but the front legs were all wrong.  The Bilby sits on its haunches and feeds itself with its front paws, rather than looking like a dog with a very long nose & huge ears, so I persevered:






I have very long ears but no tail

None of these guys got a tail...


This little guy was the closest I came to being happy with it before discarding his alterations & starting again.  Big mistake:

It's not a tumor!!

This guy looks like he has a huge tumor (it's not a tumor!!) at the top of his legs, but the arms are so close...



And you can see I was nearly there, but I couldn't figure out how to get the arms right... then it popped into my head in the night.  Seriously, as if there isn't enough crap going on in my head at night without Bilby gussets making an appearance:



This is almost the finished model.  I need to stop the gusset from going up into the chin, because it looks a bit piggy, so I've made another one this morning, with the umpteenth alteration of the pattern, which returns the head to its original size.  Once he's made, I will post a picture, I promise.

And after all this, I can understand why makers of patterns get so cross when people breach their copyright and just rip off the patterns.. there are hours and hours of work in this - every single alteration was made into a model - I have a bag full of fabric discards, and a bag full of pattern discards too.  Anyway, they're going in the shop, and we shall just take our chances with the rip-off artists.  At least we know I was first, right?

Riiiight.  Ciao!

PS The Etsy Treasury Code Generator doesn't work any more, so you'll have to pop over to Etsy to see the Bilby Love Treasury I made - it's fabulous!!

*Sticky - sticky beak - Aussie slang for a quick look, possibly rhyming slang for a peek.