Can you believe I only have 2 stinkin' buttons left to sew on the backpack but I've let it sit in lieu of another project??? Yeah, story of my life: incomplete projects!
So here's the latest-n-greatest. Those who don't know what a "Fish Extender/FE" is here's a brief explanation: On the Disney Cruise Line classic ships there's a metal clippy thing outside every stateroom for schedules, correspondence, etc. to be clipped to every day. The metal clip looks like a decorative fish. People who will be sailing together meet up online and form little cruise groups. They often will make hanging pocket organizers to hang from the fish clip then leave each other little surprise trinkets and presents throughout the cruise. The hanging pocket organizers are called "Fish Extenders" or "FE" for short because they hang from the fish and extend it's use per se. Last week I made a Fish Extender for us for the first time. I wanted to do something completely different and inspired. I posted this on the other forum where the cruise groups are super-active and form up. I thought I'd share it here as well. Here's a copy/paste for you to enjoy:
BACK STORY
Our first FE from our first cruise this past September I ordered from Etsy (I think stitchesnbows/stephanie???). We never intended to reuse our first one because I sorta knew if we continued cruising I'd probably make more. So our first FE said "The Sutton's First Cruise". Yep, not using that again. I don't have one of the super-cool embroidery machines so I can't do all the cool Disney font stuff or the fun embroidered appliques/graphics. Because of that, I knew I didn't want to make an FE that was remotely based on those beautiful designs. It would turn out looking like I tried to produce the same FE without the right tools. I understood that. So I knew from the start I had to come up with a theme or a design that I could really work for a lot of detail and utilize different techniques. And then my inspiration hit me. Pixar Up! One of our favorite Disney/Pixar movies.
The design elements evolved as my material arrived and I started working. I'll explain more as I go thru the details below.
So, I proudly present to you my completely from-my-brain (no laughing) Pixar Up! inspired FE!!!
THE DETAILS
The "cover" or as I seemed to dub it, The Name Plate (& hanging assembly). Like I said, I don't have a fancy embroidery machine. I have a nice sewing machine that I adore with my whole heart. ((I used hand-me-downs and borrowed for 15 years before I bought my very own.)) I have always had an artistic streak, an innate ability to find scale, sketch, paint, create, etc. If I couldn't embroider I had to rely on what I could do. I bought 1/2 yard of brown upholstery-weight fabric. I cut it to the dimensions I needed per my initial sketches of of my FE and ironed a chunk of interfacing to the back leaving 1/2 inch raw all the way around the edges. This was to stabilize the fabric (no more stretching or shifting) and give a more solid backing for the paint that was to come. I actually cut & prepped 2 of the name plates in case I didn't like the 1st one. I spent about an hour working out how to get my lettering the way I wanted it, make an elipse template, then do the actual to-scale sketch. I had some yellow transfer sheets (they sell these for quilting, I think) and simply traced the design onto the fabric. It looked like this:
Then I gathered up all the fabric paints I had, a few fine-tip paint brushes, mixed the colors to what I needed them to be, and painted away. There are 4 coats on each letter.
I know Ellie's adventure book has a little applique globe thing under the lettering and that was something I really struggled with. Initally I was going to find a graphic online that would work, size it to what I needed, print it on an iron-on transfer, then tranfer it to a little piece of fabric to stitch on. While I was sketching the name plate I needed a circle to give me a representation of the globe. I was digging around my craft stuff for anything the right size I could trace in it's place when I came across the extra leftover Ellie badges I made for one of my FE gifts last September. Those looked like this:
Well, the Ellie badge was exactly the right size to fit the space I had to fill on my name plate and it was one of those **duh!** moments. An Ellie Badge it would be!
When thinking of the hanging apparatus for the FE (this all actually came to mind when the whole thing was near completion) it wasn't hard to be hit by some fun details I could include. The dowel rod that you can't see is actually painted silver like Carl's cane. The tennis ball ends are wooden balls I got at Hobby Lobby then hand-painted. My poor little dog sat at my feet patiently waiting for me to give her back the tennis ball I borrowed to see the scale. LOL! Then there was the thought that the string that the FE hangs from should be a representation of the hose Carl tows his house around with. Miniature green hose is not easy to come up with. We ended up at Lowe's having the ever-patient employee roll the dozens of spools of wiring around to us for closer inspection over and over until we analyzed everything green and made our best selection. 6 feet of green wiring was purchased because I had no idea how much I'd need. I didn't end up using that much. Maybe 4 feet or so. So I have the hose but how do you make it look more like what it's supposed to be? I need a hose reel. Again, not something you readily find a miniature version of. I used a metal sewing machine bobbin. Yep, had to buy that package special for this project. My machine only uses plastic drop-ins. It's hard to tell but I did barely dip the opposite tail end of the "hose" in silver model paint for the hose tip.
Carl & Ellie's house was actually the very first thing I sketched for this FE. I printed a few screen shots off the computer to use for scale & color reference then completely free-hand sketched the house. I copied my sketch, resized it for my needs, then dug out my crayons (yes, I have my own crayons and coloring books that are MINE). I colored the house and outlined it. Then I did a high-res scan to capture the texture of the crayon. I played with the color levels a bit in the computer until I got it how I wanted it. Then, I printed the house onto a fabric inkjet printer sheet that had an iron-on backing (I did NOT know these existed until a week ago). Fabulous. I cut the house out all the way to the crayon line edges, pressed the picture onto a white upholstery-grade fabric, then cut out around it leaving a void to hand-stitch the house onto the FE later in the process. I stitched the balloon and house appliques on after all the pockets were attached by their bottom seams to the FE backing but not before the sides were attached. This made it possible for me to lay out the pieces where I wanted the to be (in relation to the pockets & other elements) and still maneuver my hands to hand-stitch. I deliberately used a contrasting thread and scattered, uneven stitch pattern because the FE needed to look like a little girl made it. It's a very intentional part of the theme.
Then there's the balloons. I thought the balloons were going to kill me. Originally I purchased a small remnant piece of fabric off eBay that had a graphic of balloons floating in the air. I was going to use this piece of fabric to make the top pocket out of thus representing the balloons that carry the house. When the fabric piece arrived I was in for a heckuva kink. The orientation of the balloon fabric was wrong. It was a rectangular piece. Instead of the balloons floating up, they would've been floating sideways. This forced me to make the balloons the way I should've done them from the start. Same way as the house. No shortcuts. Sketch, copy, resize, color, scan, print, press, and....oops....the balloons are not going to fit on just 1 pocket. Dangit! Time to improvise. I cut the balloon piece in half (I felt sick when doing it, actually). The balloons are stitched where you see stitching and then liquid stitch lines the cut edges all the way across. None of it was a fast process. It took a long time and the balloons were extremely tedious. Also, after attaching the balloons my oldest son commented that they needed some string. Oh yeah. So on the balloon pieces themselves, the little lines are drawn in with a fine-tip Sharpie. I initially drew the lines in from the chimney up to the balloons but didn't like how cheesy it looked. So I dug out some charcoal-colored upholstery thread and drove myself nuts for a few hours with actual strings. The stings are probably the element I'm least happy with in the end. I think I could've done better but by that time I was thoroughly irked with them and was tired of fooling with it. I'm not about to redo them either. So the strings are what they are. The world can just deal with it. LOL!
The names on the pockets were another part I thought about a lot. I knew I couldn't stitch or paint them right onto the cloud fabric because they'd be lost. And look half-done. What would a little girl do? Well, she'd probably lovingly spell out the names best she could with regular thread making sure her favorite boys each had their names in their favorite color. Again, deliberate randomness in the stitching and the lettering to express the theme. The name pieces were stitched on at the same time as the other elements.
The FE construction itself was easy-peasy. I could do that in my sleep. I did stabilize my fabric by fusing it to other fabric. The FE back is fused to the same white upholstery fabric as the applique elements. The pocket faces are fused to simple white sheeting. Also, to protect the backside of the stitching that holds all the little appliques on I ironed lightweight bits of fusible interfacing over the thread to add extra protection from objects going in and coming out of the pockets.
I'll leave you with a handful of my stack of sketches, colored pages, and templates.
I always appreciate your candor, Kelly.
