So Much Handwork…

This weekend has been some finishing work on the tail and hat, which has entailed an enormous quantity of handwork.

Finishing the tail

While the main assembly of the tail was complete, neither end had been stitched up yet. The tip of the tail had been left open to make it possible to insert the assembled and carved foam assembly. That just required careful hand stitching, brushing as I went along, to close up the seam and keep all the pile free.

Carefully stitching the flap closed on the end of the tail

The base of the tail has the leather attachment hanger coming off the EVA foam support inside. I pieced an end out of the fur and stitched across the leather (hurrah for the zipper foot)

At the top of the image you can see where the fur is stitched to the leather coming out of the tail base. This is also a great closeup of the Nu-Foam stabilized polyfill laminate.

Finishing the (Moose Sized) Top Hat

We need a hat from which Bullwinkle can attempt to pull a rabbit; fortunately he doesn’t hav to wear it. I’d already got a good start by shortening a pop up wastebasket, but it needed to be finished into a reasonable facsimile of a magician’s top hat.
I set out to build the brim with some fusible buckram, some black taffeta, and some 16 gauge black finished aluminum jewelry wire. This entailed a bit of machine sewing and massive amounts of hand work. Some black satin blanket binding served for both the inside sweatband and a sharp looking hatband and bow.

Need to build a brim for the hat. Start by patterning it, then cut out two ovals of fusible buckram and fused it to some black taffeta. By hand, blanket stitched some 16gauge wire around the edge of one.

The right side of the brim piece with the wire stitched to it.

Closeup of the wire stitched to the one piece.

Marking the inner edge, and cutting out the center of one.

Stitched, turned, and topstitched. Again, hurrah for the zipper foot

Stacking the pieces to see if I’m on the right track, and realizing how much handwork is in my future.

Brim hand stitched to the crown, inner edge clipped and steamed into the crown.

Starting to stitch blanket binding over the clipped edge as a “sweatband”

Showing the stitching securing the brim to the crown

Closeup of the “sweatband”. It looks slightly lumpy because the crown is a modified pop up wastebasket, with a floating inner bag.

It looks like a hat. Needs a hatband and bow

There we go, hatband complete with a tidy bow

Not too bad, in fact it’s pretty spiffy!

On to the next step…

To cut the (expensive) fur for Rocky’s body, I want to use the more precise cut-from-the-back-with-a-blade technique so I can preserve the pile length, and I will be eliminating the seam allowance to use the advanced zigzag seam fur assembly technique which delivers almost invisible seams in the resulting garment.

With all that in mind, I’m laying out the pieces individually rather than attempting to cut mirror imaged pieces on folded fabric. I’ve got the first three large body panels laid out, and am taking a break to watch the Oscars at a friend’s home. I’m waiting for an order of color matched zippers to arrive before I can do the suit center seams in any case.
Post-Oscars edit: I got the rest of the 8 pieces (four body, four sleeve) laid out and started marking the stitching lines where I will actually cut. Very relieved to see I’ve got plenty of fur left if I need to do some emergency modifications.