Peep Peep! The making of a Very Useful Engine

 Hello lovelies! It was Thomas the Tank Engine Day at work today. Many people have asked how I made the costume so I will try to give you a little story of how I did it.

This was one not primarily sourced from charity shops. I had to custom sew it to get the effects I wanted. 

Things I bought or sourced from my fabric stash for the shirt and wheels:

·         A long sleeve blue shirt (I love these Fruit of the Loom shirts. I have lots in various colours. They are a decent price, come in lots of colours and I know what size I need)

·         A silver table runner I bought for £1 at the YMCA

·         Some red poly cotton fabric

·         Black, white, royal blue and yellow felt

I also used lots and lots and lots of Bonda-Web. If you don’t know what this miracle stuff is, it is double sided iron on interfacing. You iron it on the back of your fabric, cut out the shape you want, peel off the paper, then iron your design onto the other bit of fabric (in my case the shirt), then stitch over it. In my experience, Bonda-Web needs top stitching because it will eventually unpeel but is great for holding fiddly designs down without pins so they don’t shift as you try to sew.

I just made stencils for every part of the design then Bonda-Webbed them to the shirt (both front and back)

Then I either machine sewed (the red stripe, the silver stripe, Thomas’s head and body and the number in the box on the back) or hand sewed (the yellow window circles, his eyes, mouth and eyebrows, his accessories at the bottom) them to the shirt. To make his nose 3D I made a circle, sewed around it with a gathered stitch and pulled the circle shut after stuffing it with polyfill fluff. Then I thought my nose was too small so I did it again with a slightly larger circle and stuffed it with fluff as well as the previous too small nose. Then I sewed it by hand to the shirt.

I drew his smile lines with a sharpie. What colour sharpie, you ask? Well, that’s up for debate. I had a grey and a silver. I used the silver on one side, then stopped to make something for my tea, came back and picked up the grey one by accident and then, oh no! The smile lines did not match! After a moment of panic, I carefully traced over the grey line with the silver and then carefully traced over the silver line with grey. Phew! Crisis averted!

I didn’t make the red and silver stripes go all the way to the side seams. I would like to tell you this was because I had anticipated that attaching a non-stretch fabric to a stretchy one would necessitate making a little slit on each side for ease of movement but really I am just crap at measuring and made them a bit too short then couldn’t get it over my hips so had to cut a slit and was thankful I had made a measuring mistake so all’s well that ends well.

To make the ankle wheels I cut out a wheel template in blue and hand stitched it to a black circle while watching Horrible Histories. Then I made some wrapping straps which I sewed to another black circle. Then I pinned and re-pinned on my leg to get a cuff that fit my leg.

Then I sewed Velcro on and made some adjustments—I needed a little dart on one side and a corner clipped but now they fit my leg perfectly.

Then I hand sewed the circle on the leg band to the wheel circle and inserted a slightly smaller circle of cardboard (gold carboard in this case as it is what I had used to spray paint my Medusa crown).

View from the top:

Then on to the hat. The steam coming out has impressed a lot of folks so how did I do it?

I bought:

A stovepipe hat (taller than a top hat) and some invisible hairnets like a dinner lady might wear.

Then I carefully stuffed polyfill fluff into a hairnet and sewed it closed then attached it to a piece of felt. Then I hot glued the felt to the top of the hat. I kept filling hairnets with fluff and using hot glue and tiny stitches to hold them together.

I am very pleased with how it came out. The only slight drawback is I don’t think the shirt cannot be washed. But having spent time in the theatre I know you can just spray it with a bit of Dettol or Lysol and call it square.

What will I make next? Stay tuned!

It Takes a Village...

...to raise a Spidergrrl.

Hello lovelies! What an adventure I have had. Anyone who has read my book The Wanting Comes in Waves will know that the last good thing the Amazing Spiderman did for me before he got sick and died was take me to get a mammogram in Pensarn. Well, it is that time again because it has been a little over two years.

This has thrown up lots of issues for me:

• Grief over the fact that I have to do it alone this time (and the memory of what came after the last time)
• Anxiety of all the related things that go with it like how to get there by bus (which bus do I have to get, where does it pick up? How much does it cost? How will i know where to get off?)
• Once I am there the worry that they will find something because many women in my family have had breast cancer
• Then the journey home: where does the bus pick you up to take you home because it is never the same place it dropped you off

The last time all I had to worry about was the actual worry that I might get a diagnosis of breast cancer because Spiderman found the bus times, got us on the bus, got me to the mobile unit in the Morrisons car park and got us on the right bus to come home. 

I just kept thinking, How can I do this alone? 

Several people said  Oh, you can walk to Morrisons! it takes about 15 minutes. it's easy! you just have to do things like:

go OVER a bridge

go UNDER an underpass

go THROUGH a tunnel

and then it just became a list of prepositions and that was even worse than trying to figure out the bus. I think these people have seriously underestimated just how lost I can get. The bus is stressful, but walking it blindly through Preposition Land is terrifying. maybe if i had  time to do a practice walk with a friend like Spiderman used to do with me, but not without having a go a few times before the actual day. I will take my chances with the bus. 

I know it seems silly. I am a grown-ass woman. I should be able to do this. But i really struggle with reading a bus timetable. How can I figure out what bus i need if the timetable looks like this? 

Seriously. It might as well be written in Chinese because I cannot make heads of tails of it. 

I have just been talking and talking to Spiderman asking for his help from beyond the grave to help me figure out how in the hell I can do this without him. 

And he came through. He sent me ALL THE ANGELS.  I mean, seriously. There were angels every step of the way. 

First, I had no idea what bus to catch. How do you find that out if you can't read the bus timetable? 

FIRST TWO ANGELS: My colleague Paul at work remembered that one of our regular customers Chas takes the bus that passes Morrisons. He emailed Chas for me and asked what bus he took. Chas confirmed that i need the X11. He told me where he catches the bus and it was outside my favourite YMCA charity shop. Chas came by the shop the next day and talked me through it in person as he knew i was anxious about transport issues. 

ANGEL NUMBER THREE: I now knew my bus number and where to catch the bus, but how would I know the bus times? My dear friend and neighbour Sian and I went out for a cuppa before work and I mentioned my predicament. She told me all about the TRAVELINE CYMRU app which lets you plug in where you are, where you want to go, and the time and date you are going and POW! it tells very clearly all the information you need and more! Isn't this so much easier to read???

So, today I had to completely rearrange my schedule. My Angel colleague Paul swapped shifts with me so i could get to my 3:20pm appointment. We also swapped book clubs. I did his book club today from 1-2pm and he will do mine next week on Tuesday night. 

After book club i changed into leggings and a t-shirt to make getting my boobs out a bit easier then I went down to the YMCA. I decided  I was in plenty of time to catch the 14:13 bus (2:13 to my American peeps) and I could just mooch around Morrisons supermarket for an hour as the bus ride was about ten minutes.   

There was still that worry about how will I know where to get off the bus. Several people said it would be OBVIOUS but they have not counted on how crap I am at spotting (or rather missing) landmarks.

Enter ANGEL NUMBER FOUR: The lovely Christine from book club which had disbanded a mere 10 minutes ago came over and said, "Oh are you taking this bus as well?" I confirmed I was. I explained that I was nervous about where to get off and she offered to DING the button for me at my stop. What a relief. And it really was a relief. I was staring with my X-Ray vision out the window looking for the obvious sign that said MORRISONS in big ole letters when i heard the bell go DING and Christine shout, "This is your stop!" I am eternally grateful as all I could see was this hugh-jass hedge so i would have never known it because i was looking in the wrong direction. 

ANGEL NUMBER FIVE: the bus driver. He was incredibly patient with me and told me where to pick up the bus on the way back. It involved crossing the very busy road and he told he me to use the crosswalk to get across. I hadn't even seen the crosswalk as i was too busy imagining myself as a real life FROGGER tried to hop across the road to the alligators on logs (well, the return bus shelter.)

I had an hour to potter around Morrisons so i found a few treats on special offer like this crazy delicious palm oil free chocolate spread. I bought two but after tasting it, wish i had bought the lot. YUM.

Then it was time for the ole mammogram which Spiderman described as a boob sandwich between two panes of glass. They let me in at 3:15pm for my 3:20 appointment. It took literally five minutes which included going over my details twice, taking off my bra, getting squished two different ways and getting dressed again. 

Before I went in I wished I had gone for a wee but when I came out i didn't need to go anymore so it must have been just nerves. 

I looked at the Traveline app and it looked like i would need to wait until 15:54 (3:54 for my American peeps) to return to Carmarthen so i went over to the crossing, pushed the button, stopped the cars and crossed over. I was resigned to wait for 30 minutes when lo-and-behold an X11 bus was trundling our way. The mammogram had happened so quickly I had managed to catch the 15:24 (3:24) back to town. And just like that I was back on familiar ground by 3:38. 

I am so insanely proud of myself for figuring it out without crying that I feel like I have climbed Mt Everest. It feels stupid because taking the bus should be a life skill, but it is not one I acquired because Spiderman was the great navigator. But now i know I can do it though I could not have done it without all the ANGELS. 

Thanks Best Beloved.