More Blog Friendly SyF~

Here, making some shoes out of a roll of cork that's 24x48 inches in size.



The first two pieces glued together.



Well this was fun, I received my fur samples from distinctivefabrics.com. When I originally opened the package, I only saw four samples instead of the five I was supposed to recieve, but lo and behold. The corduroy was stuck under the black fur.



White fur, 2" pile.



Garrr something, this is an awesome fabric, probably going to make my pants and vest out of this stuff, it's strong, thick, and slightly shiny.



Yea, no.



Black fur, 2" pile.



And that sneaky corduroy.



My workstation for the sole construction, I used the weights to crush the plates together while I milled about waiting for stuff to dry.



And that's why you get to see my bamboo! Me ol' bamboo laying next to the hat on the ping-pong table.



A size reference, I'm 6'3" and the staff is supposed to be only 6' in length, but I got a longer one.



I couldn't unwarp the warpage from the rolled cork, so it made the contact cement process a pain.



A close up of a wet plate.



After two are stuck together, it's much more rigid.



Scraps, yes, I was bored waiting for stuff to dry.



The plates for the second sole, I'm not bending them like this, they're just like this. Made this very annoying.



Finished soles!



Some reference shots for myself, I printed these out in black and white and drew on them for ideas and planning.







God, I have sexy feet.

Get a C.L.U.

I really don't have much of anything to say, so enjoy the progress pics of me gloves. ME GLOVES

If at first you don't succeed, FAIL AGAIN~

If at first you don't succeed with hand sewing, grab a friggin' beast like this. This sewing machine is older than I am, and was purchased at Montgomery Ward, a store that hasn't existed for at least 15 years. But man, it still works great~
So I found another pattern that I wanted to try, and it seemed much easier to follow. Hell, I didn't even have instructions for it, I just copied it from some work gloves I use.
Here is my polandball glove finished. I took a bunch of shots but they're all terrible, even this one. The first glove set i did was awful, a ton of missed sizes on things, missed stitching, but I knew what to fix.
And look, it's mah claw! I made these out of primo! sculpey, and I currently have eight ready to go and mount on my finished glove.
Woot! This one turned out much better, and stronger, and tighter in fit, and much cooler. I'm ready now to work on much better cloth.

Lessons Learned - My tailoring skill is 1~

So, I decided to approach my panda gloves by using the old fashioned method of sewing, and since I had no idea how to do it, I was learning on the fly. Here is my first sheet of fabric!
Here is my first working. There were a few things I did wrong, one was the entire glove didn't wrap around my fat hand, two, the fingers weren't uniform in width, length, or shape. And the hole for my thumb was too large.
So I restarted with a piece of blue fabric, and allowed for a lot more working space with everything. I stitched it lightly so I could work with it better.
Here it is around my hand.
So this one worked out a lot better, I finished the thumb, as you see above, and attached it. However I found that the stitching I used was terrible for what I was doing, and that the cloth would stretch and rip easily, so it fell apart easily.
Here it is flipped inside out, it looks good for what's done, but honestly, I have no idea how I'm going to attach the rest of the stuffing and fur to it, or at least re-plan it so it works. So I've decided to take another approach and see how that works out. I was looking forward to doing it this way because I could make sure the glove was as cool as possible, but shit happens. My second method will be much easier though.

The Adventure Begins - Defrosted in the Microwave of Evil

I attached the metal cap on, then painted over it to hide all the imperfections that happened whilst attaching it.
Hot glue gunning the fur onto the edge of the hat.
The finished product, and trust me, it looks amazing.
The hat on my human head.
A look from a higher point! It's done, I'll have to do some changes later on to make sure the hat doesn't fall off of my head randomly. That'll be done after I finish my panda head.

The Adventure Begins - Reheated in the Microwave of Evil

So, after the second coat of stain, I ended up with something like this. I got overzealous and put too much stain on the wood, so I had to sand it.
And the final product was this, probably the most accurate color shot I've gotten, but you can see the difference in the coloring and sheen.
1x1 galvanized steel, what ducts are made out of, will be the material for my cap.
I cut it out to a circle, and started to make incisions in the side of the circle to create the little upward cusp you see at the edge of the metal on the reference work.
This is the final product of the work, blacksmithing it out, cutting the 8 holes for the screws, and the tiny piece so I can make it into a cone.
Just holding it in place so I can mark where to drill the holes on the hatMy intense concentration.
My extreme aggravation.
A cool shot from the side.
The cap in place, this will be finished tomorrow after a coat of polyurethane on the wood and a few coats of paint on the metals.
Overall I'm impressed that it turned out as well as it did, I guess good prep and planning helped a lot, and I'm looking forward to starting my next parts of the project, the feet and the gloves.

Also, I recommend visiting this.
Enjoy ^_^